Cozmo's Dev Blog - Eclipse

This is so cool it is almost disturbing

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 16:26:00-0400

I was looking for a plugin for eclipse to replace a feature that "went away" when I upgraded Aptana//Eclipse to the latest version and I noticed an "Install button". I moused over it and got the pop up dialog below. And you know what? I dragged the link into Eclipse and it worked like a charm. It brought up the plugin installation dialog and checked for any missing dependencies and installed the plugin. Easy peasy. I mean how cool is that? Compare that with Microsoft's web platform installer that installed SIXTY FIVE separate programs just so I could make web apps with their stack. Java/Eclipse is bloated as hell but that is nothing compared to MS. FOSS FTW!!!

Amazing Website To Build (CF) Eclipse installs

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 23:16:00-0400

One of the biggest pains in the arse when dealing with some FOSS apps (LAMP especially) is dependency hell. If the app you need is not part of the package manager you can get into a day(s) long hunt for dependencies. The same is true for Eclipse (to a lesser degree). Or rather it was. Someone on CF_talk was having problems with installing CFEclipse on the latest version of Eclipse 3.4 (Ganymede). In the past a few people recommended Pulse (myself included) to deal with Eclipse's dependencies. Pulse is a great app that resolves dependencies (most of the time) when building Eclipse Distros. Pulse is an excellent product but has a bad habit of downloading a gig or more of files (in my case) to its plugin cache (depending on your builds). Another option, and in my opinion a better option, is yoxos.com's On Demand website. http://yoxos.com/ondemand/ Yoxos.com's On Demand website is an online tool for building custom Eclipse distros/installs. This site is one of the most amazing web based apps I have seen to in my life. The front end is damn near that of a desk top app, and the back end is even more impressive. It allows you to pick and choose from hundreds of plugins and automatically resolves dependencies so you can create custom Eclipse installs that you can save, merge and share. I started messing around with the various plugins and found some of the most amazing tools like editors for PHP, SQL, CSS, (X)HTML, JavaScript and XML with support for Adobe AIR apps, all the major JS/AJAX libraries with code assist and inline help; wussywig HTML editors, JavaScript debuggers, XML schema editors, JavaScript/CSS/html function/property browsers, Database development tools and editors, snippets etc. etc. Not to mention Eclipse is the defacto standard for Java development and supports most of it's tool kits as well as having plugins for just about every language under the sun. And keep in mind that a lot of the above editors are not just text editors with color coding and rudimentary code complete but first class, full featured tools/IDE's like the ones that we used to (and still do) pay hundreds of dollars for. Oh yeah. It is all FREE!!! FOSS, me love you long time!!

I don't know shit....

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:39:00-0400

If you are a CF developer (or web developer) and you are still using DreamWeaver or Homesite or CF studio and not using Eclipse or any other of the advanced IDE's like Komodo, Visual Studio, Aptana, NetBeans etc, *you literally have no idea what you are missing out on*. If you use F1 on DreamWeaver, Homesite or CF studio as a primary source of information about programming, CSS, HTML and your available options you are also missing a HUGE piece of information . I have been using Eclipse for about 9 months now and the one thing it has taught me is how little I know. When I first fired up CF studio some 10 odd years ago I looked at all the CF related buttons and the options and felt clueless. By using various Eclipse distros like the one provided by Pulse I feel even more clueless than I did 10 years ago. AND I have a working knowledge of web development and client and server side languages like JS, SQL, XML, XSL, HTML, XHTML, CSS, ASP, PHP, RegEx, CFML etc under my belt. As well as being exposed good doses of VB, ASP.NET, C#, ROR, Java, PERL, Python etc over the years. The one thing I am finding out that I don't know shit. At FSU the is an engraving on Dodd Hall that reads "The half of knowledge is to know where to find knowledge" Now I know the other half of knowledge is making sure that you are being exposed to *new* knowledge on a regular basis. If you explore Eclipse it will end up teaching you more than you can possibly imagine. Literally.

RIP Homesite and CF Studio.

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 01:36:00-0400

I was a HUGE fan of Homesite and CF Studio for years. I thought that I would never find a replacement. I mean never ever. I never liked Dreamweaver and I have long admired MS's Visual Studio but developing strictly for windows was never really an option for me. The current crop of IDE's that I have been using to do Java development (NetBeans and Eclipse) make Homesite look like a child's play thing. Homesite (and CF Studio) is a great text editor. A true masterpiece in it's time. However, the difference between CF Studio and Eclipse is far greater than the difference between CF Studio and Notepad. In that light, I can say that in the last 5 years ColdFusion has not had a good IDE. I love CFEclipse but it is not so much the CF part that I love s much as it is the Eclipse part. Hats off to mark Drew and Crew, I am deeply indebted to the CFEclipse team for what they have done. But Mark is one guy. The other IDE's have armies of developers. CFEclipse is not nearly, not even remotely, close to the tools available to MS, PERL, PHP, Ruby, Java, etc. developers. Perhaps the CF community is happy or content with DW and CFEclipse. I am not. I know there is better and that bothers me.

CFEclipse All-in-One (BETA)

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:35:00-0400

Mark Drew announced an update to CFEclipse All-in-One. This little nugget of fun is a standalone version of CFEclipse. All you need to do is unzip an run it. You can download it here: http://www.cfeclipse.org/download/ What I like about this is that it is a stripped down version of eclipse that is just 64.6 megs after being unzipped compared to the 155 MB of the standard Eclipse install (including the CFEclipse plugin). That makes it PERFECT for my CF(Absolutely)Anywhere project. That just bought me an extra 90 MB of space on my thumb drive. Thanx Mark! In case this is your first time trying CFEclipse you can download the ColdFusion FlexBuilder Extensions here. And here is how to enable Eclipse RDS Support courtesy of danvega.org

CFEclipse / Eclipse Resources

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 21:44:00-0400

Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF)

http://www.yoxos.com/featuredb/3.1M5a/win32/org.eclipse.emf/

Installing the DBEdit Eclipse Plug-in For Use With MS SQL 2000

http://blog.pengoworks.com/blogger/index.cfm?action=blog:446

DBEdit Plugin for Eclipse
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dbedit

The Dopefly Tech Blog - tons of hints, tips and resources for Eclipse and CFEclipse
http://www.dopefly.com/techblog/?bycategory=5

The Dopefly CFEclipse Resource Page
http://www.dopefly.com/projects/cfeclipse.cfm

The Aptana JS/CSS/HTML plugin for Eclipse:
Download
http://www.aptana.com/download_all.php

Aptana review from linux.sys-con.com
http://linux.sys-con.com/read/317564.htm

A Complete Cross Platform PHP, JSP and ColdFusion Development Environment on a Stick.

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 22:03:00-0400

AKA
CF(Absolutely)Anywhere
or
PHP(Absolutely)Anywhere

I have been messing around with making Live Demo Disks for almost a year now. I have tried a whole slew of web/database/application servers and apps that ran off a CD or a Thumb Drive (Stick) and found some that were excellent and some that were, frankly, held together by the digital version of duct tape. Not that there is anything wrong with digital duct tape, we use it all the time. :)

Well, after a lot of trial and error I have come up with (what I believe to be) the best portable development and Live Demo environment around (For PHP, ColdFusion and MySQL that is) .

Pretty bold statement, huh?

Well, this offers a complete self-contained development environment for *AMPE Apache/MySQL/PHP/Eclipse and ACME (Apache/ColdFusion/MySQL/Eclipse). It will run on Windows, Mac AND Linux (Except for MyManager, which is nice, but optional).
Right now I cannot run both CF and PHP on the same web server but it is close enough. I am sure it can be done but I don’t feel like it at the moment. Feel free to take the ball and run with it though.

Here goes:

XAMPP or XAMPP Lite:

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html#646

XAMPP Lite provides you with every thing to run a bare bones *AMP stack. It even comes with phpMyAdmin so you can manage MySQL with out needing a desktop app.

XAMPP Lite is a very reduced version of XAMPP with:
Apache 2.2.4
PHP 5.2.1
MySQL 5.0.33
phpMyAdmin 2.9.2
Openssl 0.9.8d
SQLite 2.8.15.

Railo:

http://www.railo.ch/en/index.cfm?treeID=200
Railix (Live Version) is a self contained CF engine that, unlike CFEverywhere, runs right out of the box. Unzip it and run the start.bat (on Linux run start.sh) and it is up and running. You can change the port to 80 by editing the server.xml file. What I like most about it is that the Linux and Windows versions comes preloaded with a version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) so you don’t have to worry if it is installed on the machine you are using (Do Macs come preloaded with the JRE?). You can even use the JRE to run Eclipse or other Java apps.

Eclipse:

http://www.eclipse.org/
http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

Eclipse is an AWESOME IDE and it runs on all the popular OS’s and comes with plug-ins for every language imaginable. All you need for this to run is the JRE. If you do not have the JRE installed on your system you will need to copy the JRE folder from Railo to your Eclipse folder. I am not sure how it works for non-Windows systems, as I don’t have the time to get involved with that at this juncture.

I use the Pre-built PHP IDE (I never had luck installing all the Required prerequisites) and CFEclipse with the RDS plug-ins from Adobe (See my previous Blog entry on how to install CFEclipse and the RDS plug-ins).

EMS SQL Manager 2005 Lite for MySQL.

http://www.sqlmanager.net/en/products/mysql/manager

MyManager Lite is a great little tool (windows only) for managing SQL databases. The stand alone version does not need to be installed. Just unzip and run.

EMS makes a great product and has a whole line of great DBMS tools (including a lot of free (lite) versions) for
MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle, DB2 etc....

So ther you have it . I have a USB stick that I can plug into any computer, be it Mac, Windows or Linux and I can write, run and test applications written using PHP, ColdFusion and JSP. It truly is a complete cross platform web development environment for most of the languages I use.

I am sure that someone will flame me for some unfathomable reason.

Why CF Eclipse Rules

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 22:02:00-0400

Untitled Document

I read a thread about some user wanting to make the switch to CF Eclipse (CFE) and wanted a case for switching. Now, I have been using CF Studio and HomeSite since ' 97 and I can truthfully say that it changed my life. It is truly a masterpiece of software engineering and to it's credit it still being used as the day in day work horse html/code/text editor for legions and people (Myself included) have hacked/extended it to write ASP, ASP.NET , PHP, Python,etc .. Even Macrome... err..I mean Adobe provides tag library updates for it even though it was dropped from their product line some 5 years ago.

Now, I never really liked DW (At the same time I never really liked the Rolling Stones either... I know that they are a great band but they never did it for me).. and I have avoided it for years (until V 8.0) for one simple reason: No short cut keys for snippets. I have short cuts for everything and can literally write an app and only type in the variables. I just started using DW for its CSS and Xhtml formatting abilities.

I never thought I would ever drop CF Studio as my primary web-coding tool. It is like my favorite pair of jeans that never wears out.. But that has changed and even I am surprised that a ColdFusion authoring tool could ever pull me away from CF Studio.....

Even though I have only been using it for about two weeks CF Eclipse (CFE) amazes me more and more every day. I am absolutely in love with CFE and I will tell you why.

First, in order to get the most out of CFE you really need mess around with it to see what all its features do and you most definitely need to tweak it.

You will want to add the Adobe CF RDS Plug-ins and make use of the Dictionary View, Outline and RDS Data and File View, Services Browser and Snippet Tree View. You can access these in the Window >> Show View > Other (if not listed).

I have broken the guide into 3 Flash presentations

How to install CFE and the Adobe CF RDS Plug-ins . This assumes that you have unziped the file to a directory and have it up and running

How to set up CFE and add all the ColdFusion related features so you can utilize it to it's fullest. I am sure that this is incomplete as I have only been using it for two weeks.

And lastly, a list of the features that make CFE and eclipse itself a great IDE.

What these things do:

Dictionary view:
This allows you to browse CF tags and functions alphabetically or by function (Much like the CF Studio’s expression builder.

Double click on a tag or function and it will give you a dialog so you can fill in the variables (like edit tag).

Right click on a tag or function and it will allow you to view the help for that item on cfdocs.org (DW’s help is horrible IMHO)

Outline View:

Allows you to jump to tags and functions in the document like CF studio’s and DW’s Tag view.

Component Explorer: This is like the CFC Browser in DW

This scans server and lists all the CFC’s and web services as well as their methods, properties and arguments. You can right click on a method and it allows you to insert the code needed to a call to that method via CFInvoke or createObject
Like so:

createObject("component", " comps.workspaceBean").getAmt();

Now the Adobe RDS Plug-ins:outoup

RDS Dataview:
This allows you to Browse all the tables for all the data sources on the server. You can test Queries in the Query view.

Visual Query Builder

It has a Visual Query Builder that allows you to add cfqueryparams to your query. A very nice feature.

And if you right click on a table there is a feature under ColdFusion wizards called Create CFC. This thing is golden. It creates all the functions for CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete Records)

As well as Active Records, DOA, web services, flex data services etc. A real time saver.

Other Features:
Built in Version management
Edit Tags
Variables dropdown menu
Programmable Snippets
Inline help
Code completion
Jump to end tag
Code Folding
Problems Bar
Bookmarks
Fast view
Methods View
Search
Short Cut keys for common tasks
Tool bars

Resources:

My Snippets. Includes all of the following Cold Fusion Variables

CFCATCH_variables
CFDIRECTORY_Query_Columns
CFERROR_Request_Variables
CFERROR_Validation_Variables
CFFILE_Upload_Variables
CFFTP_ListDir_Variables
CFFTP_StopOnError_Variables
CFHTTP_GET_Variables
CFPOP_Query_Columns
CFREGISTRY_Query_Columns
CFSEARCH_Query_Columns
CFSTOREDPROC_Query_Columns
CGI_Variables
Client_Variables
ColdFusion_Query_Attributes
ColdFusion_Server_Variables

Eclipse RDS Support from .danvega.org t http://www.danvega.org/blog/index.cfm/2006/7/28/Eclipse-RDS-Support

ColdFusion FlexBuilder Extensions zip filehttp://www.cfreport.org/downloads/CF_FB_Extensions.zip

cfeclipse.org http://www.cfeclipse.org/

Eclipse downloads http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/