What's New in 3.2

Here are descriptions of some of the more interesting or significant changes made to the Eclipse Platform for the 3.2 release of Eclipse. They are grouped into:

Plug-in developers will also be interested in the corresponding What's new document in the plug-in developer's guide.

Platform Changes

Integrated progress on startup

Startup progress is now integrated directly into the splash screen.

Picture of the startup progress in the splash screen

Problems, Tasks and Bookmarks view supports multiple filters

It is now possible to define more than one filter on the Problems, Tasks, and Bookmarks views. These filters are additive so the view will show the union of the markers that satisfy these filters.

You can add, remove, enable, or disable filters as desired.

Picture showing multiple filters

Window-level working set selection

The notion of window-level working set selection has been introduced. By default, there is a "Working Sets" action in the window tool bar that allows you to select an arbitrary selection of working sets.

Picture showing window-level working sets

Any view that is set to use the "Window Working Set" (via the traditional selection dialog) will show the contents of all selected working sets.

Linked resources anywhere

You can now create linked resources at any depth within your projects. This allows you to put resources from different places in the file system anywhere you like in the project structure, including below other linked resources.

Picture showing linked resources

Mac OS X on X86/Intel

The Eclipse launcher and native libraries have been compiled as universal binaries so that you can run Eclipse on Mac OS X X86/Intel platforms using the Mac OS X (Mac/Carbon) downloads.

Draggable window trim

The window 'trim' (that is, Status Line, Heap Status, Fast View Bar...) can now be repositioned around the workbench window. Each trim element has its own grab handle that you can either click and drag to move the trim or right-click to get a context menu.

Picture showing draggable window trim

Pervasive filtering support

Support for filtering content based on provided filter text is now supported in several places. This now appears in the Import, Export, and New wizards, and in the Show View dialog. This is the same feature that already exists in the Preferences and Show View dialogs.

Picture showing unfiltered Show view dialog  Picture showing filtered Show view dialog

Project Explorer view

A new Project Explorer view has been added. This view presents a domain-oriented view of the projects in the workspace. General projects are shown in the same way as the Navigator view, but other projects are presented in a hierarchy that makes sense for their particular domain. For example, Java projects appear as a hierarchy of source folders and packages rather than folders.

Picture showing the project explorer view

Import Existing Projects with copy

The Import Existing Projects into Workspace wizard now provides the option to copy a project's files into the current workspace location when importing from a directory. The original behavior is still maintained simply by ensuring the Copy projects into workspace option is not checked.

Picture showing copying a project's files

Problems view filters use Window Working Set by default

Problems view filters are tied to the Window Working Set by default when they are created. You do not have to update the Problems view when you set up your working sets if default settings are used. If there are no working sets, the filter is applied to all elements.

Picture showing Problems view filters

Install/Update enhancements

Install/Update now supports multiple selections for most Update operations in the Manage Configuration window (disable, uninstall, enable). In addition, the uninstall operation can now be performed on currently enabled features. Update will disable them, restart Eclipse, and perform the actual uninstall on the way back up.

Alternative file systems

Projects and linked resources can now be created with file systems other than the local file system.

Picture showing a non-local file system

Problems can be grouped

Problems in the Problems view can now be grouped by severity, type, or other criteria provided by plug-ins.

Picture showing problem grouping

Multiple problems can be fixed at once

The Problems view now allows you to add other problems that have the same potential resolution so that you may fix many at once.

Picture showing multiple problems being fixed at once

Close unrelated projects

A new command, Close Unrelated Projects, is available in the context menu when a project is selected. This command is a great way to focus your workspace on what you are working on right now, eliminating the clutter and overhead of any unrelated projects in the workspace.

Picture showing the closing of unrelated projects

Marker Limits moved to preferences

Marker Limits are now applied to all filters rather than defined one per filter.

Picture showing marker limits

Improved hyperlink navigation

Hyperlink navigation is now also available if the editor does not have focus.

Improved help in dialogs

Most dialogs in Eclipse now have a standard help button on the bottom left corner. This button summons context help, same as pressing F1 (on Windows). In addition, the help content will now appear in the same dialog in the dialog's tray instead of in a separate window. Cheat sheets can also follow you into dialogs (in the tray) for those steps that involve opening dialogs.

Picture showing improved help

Direct text search action

Select text in an editor and invoke Search > Text > Workspace (Ctrl+Alt+G) to search in all (non-binary) files.

Multiple search views

It is now possible to have more than one Search view open at a time. Pin a search view to avoid it being reused for the next search, or select to open a search from the history in a new view.

Pin the search view

Open cheat sheet from a content file

The cheat sheet selection dialog has added an option to select a cheat sheet to open from a file.

Picture showing the opening of a cheatsheet from a file

New look for welcome

Welcome has a new look in 3.2. It is encapsulated in the 'Circles' theme that is the default for the Eclipse SDK 3.2 product. If you want, you can also switch back to the previous Welcome look from the 'Welcome' preference page (choose 'Purple Mesh' instead).

Picture showing a new Welcome

Live news in the Eclipse SDK Welcome

The What's New section of Welcome now has Live News. The content is provided by the Eclipse.org RSS news feed (requires internet connection). You can click on the links to see the full story.

Picture showing RSS in the Welcome

Animated message area for displaying errors and warnings

A new animated message area has been added to better draw your attention to potential problems. The animated tray will slide up from the bottom of a page's title area to cover the page description and will be used to convey error and warning messages. This is used in both wizards and the preference dialog.

Picture showing animated messages

System Default theme

The System Default theme is a theme that uses fonts and colors available from the operating system rather than those defined by Eclipse.

This theme is the default theme for High Contrast mode. You will be prompted to restart when switching to High Contrast mode and the theme change will be applied then.

Picture showing a theme from the operating system

Tooltips for annotations in text editors

Annotation hovering that was previously only available in Java editors is now available in all text editors.

Picture of annotation tooltip

Annotation navigation in text editors

Annotation navigation is now available in all text editors.

Picture of navigation icons

Team/CVS Changes

Import Team Project Set improvements

Team Project Sets that are stored in the workspace can now be imported directly using the Import Project Set operation available in the context menu of any *.psf file.

Commit comment templates

You can specify templates for commit comments via the Team > CVS > Comment Templates preference page. The templates will appear in the commit dialog off the history drop down menu.

Improved patching support

Improvements have been made to the CVS Create Patch wizard.

Picture showing patch-creation improvements

Improvements to create patch include:

  • The ability to create a patch that contains changes from multiple projects (this uses an Eclipse specific patch format)
  • The ability to save the patch to the clipboard, workspace or file-system.
  • The ability to exclude files from the patch

Changes have been made to the Apply Patch wizard to accommodate multi-project patches.

Improved conflict handling for CVS Team>Update operation

When performing an update, CVS has a file based markup for indicating conflicts. This markup can be cumbersome to work with. When performing a Team>Update, Eclipse will now update any non-conflicting files and then show any conflicts in the synchronize view. You can then resolve the conflicts manually from there.

CVS shows model content in synchronizations

CVS can now be configured to include model content in synchronizations by enabling the associated option on the Team > CVS > Synchronize/Compare preference page.

Picture showing the Synchronize/Compare preference page

Expand All in CVS Repositories view

An Expand All menu action has been added to folders in the CVS Repositories view. This action will fetch the entire subtree in a single round trip and expand it in the view.

History view improvements

There is now a generic History view in Eclipse. This view combines history from repositories such as CVS with content in the Eclipse local history.
  1. The view can show the history for any selected element and not just files.
  2. When in Link mode, the view links to editor and view selection and updates the contents in the background to avoid blocking the UI.
  3. Pinning the view will cause it to lock on to the current history being displayed. Another History view will be opened if the history is requested for another file or object.
  4. The CVS History page includes the local history of files. Toolbar buttons can be used to control whether local, remote, or both histories should be visible.
  5. CVS Compare with and Replace with Revision operations all populate the History view. Actions have been added to the CVS History page to launch comparisons and replace contents.

Picture showing the History view

Local and remote history operations combined for CVS projects

For projects mapped to CVS, the local history and CVS history operations in the Compare With and Replace With menus have now been combined into a single History operation.

Picture showing the History operation

Date categories in CVS history

The history for a CVS file can now be categorized by date. Icons have also been added to help distinguish local changes from remote revisions.

Picture showing the History icons

Proxy support for CVS pserver connections

Proxy support is now available for CVS pserver connections.

Picture showing proxy support

CVS Quick Diff annotations

CVS now supports Quick Diff annotations for local files. Perform a Team > Show Annotations on a local file and you will see color-based annotations of who did what in the file. The bar on the left hand side shows a different color for each user. Hovering over a section shows the details of that revision and highlights the sections of code contributed by that revision in the right hand bar.

Picture of CVS Annotate in editor

Ant Changes

Ant launch configuration refactoring

Renaming buildfiles (or projects containing buildfiles) will correctly update the launch configurations associated with the buildfile.

Java problem markers from a "javac" build

Running an Ant build that contains a "javac" declaration can produce JDT problem markers for the code that is compiled. The marker generation is controlled by an Ant UI preference: Window > Preferences > Ant > Create problem markers from "javac" results. As well, the "javac" declaration needs to set the "listfiles" attribute to "true" and an Eclipse console must be allocated for the build output.

Debug Changes

Breakpoint import and export

Breakpoints can now be exported to a file. The export wizard lets you select the breakpoints to export together; the import wizard lets you optionally create a breakpoint working set.

Picture showing Breakpoint import/export

Launch dialog

A toolbar and name filter have been added to the launch dialog. The toolbar provides actions to create, duplicate, delete, and collapse all configurations, as well as manage the filters for the dialog. The name filter dynamically filters entries in the dialog as you type to show only those configurations matching the entered text, similar to the preferences dialog.

Picture of the launch dialog

Launch filters

The launch dialog and launch history menu support a set of filters that can be configured on the Run/Debug > Launching > Launch Configurations preference page. You can filter configurations from closed, deleted, or unavailable projects. As well, you can filter specific kinds of configurations. The dialog and history menus optionally support the current workbench window working sets.

Picture of the launch configuration filter preferences

For resource based filtering to work, you need to migrate your existing launch configurations. This can be done by pressing the Migrate button on the preference page.

The filters are also available for easy access in a new toolbar in the launch dialog.

Picture of the launch dialog menu

Run/Debug perspective settings

The perspective settings for running and debugging have been centralized on the Run/Debug > Perspectives preference page.

Picture of the Run/Debug preference page

Variable columns

Variables can be displayed using columns or a standard tree. To toggle columns on/off use the view menu's Layout > Show Columns action. You can select the columns to be displayed using the Layout > Select Columns action. Recently changed variables are displayed with a yellow background (controlled by the "Changed value background color" user preference via the Run/Debug preference page). The Java debugger supports editing of Strings and primitive values inline.

Picture showing variables in columns