Sunday, July 17, 2011

Necessity is the mother of invention...

While working in eclipse, I've often found myself with 20+ java, xml, wsdl, xsd, etc. editors open at one time. Finding the desired editor can get unwieldy so I FINALLY created a plugin to give me greater control over the open editors in the eclipse environment. I hope the java/eclipse community finds it as useful as I have.

To be sure, there are other eclipse plugins out there that help out with this, but not to the extent that this plugin does. I think it provides a few extra levels of customization that make this plugin more useful, but I'll let all of the members of the java/eclipse community decide for themselves.

This plugin, called ERO (eclipse resource organizer) allows me to create 'editor groups' where only certain files are shown in the editor group. The groups are defined by ANT like inclusion/exclusion filters and can be setup/maintained quickly. For example, you can define a group called 'Java' that contains all \**\*.java files or create a group called 'Web Services' that contains both .wsdl and .xsd files.

In addition, the plugin allows you to 'colorize' editors whose associated file matches ANT like inclusion/exclusion filters. For example, you might designate all 'hibernate' xml files to be dark green.

If people find this plugin useful, I plan on updating it. I also have many additional Resource/Editor plugins rolling around in my head that I will be starting on next. The goal is to have a collection of at least 4 views with a similar style to this one, but providing different functionality. Stay tuned.

I have marked this plugin as 'beta' on the Eclipse Marketplace even though I have thoroughly tested this plugin (I actually use it at work daily and it works AWESOME!). However, I have only tested it on Eclipse 3.4 and Eclipse 3.6 on Windows Vista and IBM's Rational Application Developer (RAD) on Windows XP so I feel I have to leave it set at 'beta'. I have no reason to expect issues with this plugin on other platform/version combinations, but if you do run into an issue, please reply to this blog or eroplugin@gmail.com so I can get it fixed.

Feel free to point out any bugs and/or feature requests.

1 comment:

  1. I downloaded your plugin and wasn't expecting much, but am pleasantly surprised at how simple and useful it is. I really really really like how you can clicking anywhere in the heading row to expand or minimize a group (as opposed to maneuvering the mouse to a tiny little triangle or plus sign).

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