Eclipse Galileo has officially been released and with it comes multitudes of changes. Below are my favorites from the Platform, JDT, and Web Tools projects.
For more information, including screenshots, see:
Mac OSX Builds Use Cocoa and Sheets
The platform now uses native cocoa-build SWT widgets, rather than the obsolete Carbon. This brings the platform more in line with current Mac OSX technologies. Further, it uses Sheets for most popup dialogs to follow the OSX user interface guidelines.
Comparing Microsoft Word Documents
Comparing Microsoft Word documents in Eclipse now uses the native Microsoft Word compare support to show changes between versions. For any project that stores Word documents in source control, this feature may be nice to compare changes between versions…especially in terms of merging updates.
Open Resource Dialog
The Open Resource Dialog now allows the choice of what editor to use by right clicking to the context menu. This is a huge, yet small, benefit. Often times you may want to use a different editor than the default. This new change makes that much easier. For example, if you have custom named configuration files in XML that have an official editor (ie: JSF), you can right click to select the specific editor rather than the default XML editor.
Improved Installation/Plugin Management
Eclipse has greatly improved how plugins are added and managed, especially when adding new plugin sites.
Open Implementation Hyperlink
An Open Implementation hyperlink has been added for overridable methods, which directly opens the implementation in case there’s only one, or shows all the concrete implementations for that method in the hierarchy of its declaring type, using the quick type hierarchy. By default, the hyperlink appears when you hold down the Ctrl key while hovering over an overridable method. You can configure the modifier for this hyperlink on the General > Editors > Text Editors > Hyperlinking preference page.
This feature is a huge bonus, especially when you are navigating through source files trying to process the flow. If the class declares a type as an interface (which is usually the case), then normally you wil ctrl+click to the interface, which is obviously not what you want. This new feature allows you to pick the concrete class that you want to jump to making debugging easier.
Javadoc Viewer and Hover
The Javadoc view and hovers now support the {@inheritDoc} tag and add links to overridden methods (like the Javadoc tool). Moreover, the message for deprecated elements now shows up on top, and relative links are supported (for example, to embed images from the “doc-files” directory or to link to {@docRoot}).
This feature should make viewing javadoc inline when hovering an element easier to follow to click through to.
New JPA Entity Generation from Tables
Dali has a new Entity Generation wizard via a contribution from Oracle. This functionality includes a new wizard that offers additional configuration options.
This makes setting up JPA projects, tables, and entities much easier.
XSLT Source Editing
Content assistance is now available for the XSLT mode attribute. This attribute is on the xsl:template and xsl:apply-templates elements. The assistance will find all available modes that have been defined in the current stylesheet as well as any imported or included stylesheets.
Content Assistance is available for the name attribute on the xsl:call-template element. This will provide proposals of available named templates that can be called. This searches the current stylesheet as well as any imported or included stylesheets.
Content assistance is available for the href attribute on xsl:include and xsl:import elements. This will search the current project for any XSLT stylesheet that is available, and provide it as a possible proposal. It is limited in scope to the current project.
The XSL Tools Editor now supports the Templates View. This allows for drag and drop support of XPath templates into the editor. Users may also use this view to create and maintain new or existing templates.
XSLT Debugger
The XSLT debugger now supports a result view. The view will show the output that has been generated to the current break point. As a user steps through code the view will be updated as well.
During debugging of an XSLT Stylesheet, variables that contain NodeSets are now expandable, allowing inspection of the contents of the Nodes carried
