Eclipse Usage

This articles focuses on Eclipse usage and configuration.

Line Wrapping

Line wrapping (soft-wrap as well as hard-wrap) seems to be one of Eclipse's current weakness. I hope the situation improves soon, because it is a pity that such a simple (but essential) feature is absent. In the meantime I have found the following solutions:

• Line wrapping by Eclipse works for certain types of files. For Java code, for example, you can go to Preferences->Java->Code Style->Formatter. Then click "Show..." and you will have access to line wrapping. But this is not present for C++ code via the CDT tools... I am not sure it would work with PHP files as well, and I know it does not work for plain files.

• Soft wrapping can be done via a very useful plugin. See this page for details.

Installation Features

• Under Gentoo and Eclipse 3.2.1, the mirrors for the Update/Install of plugins are apparently not saved. A workaround is to select the "Automatic Mirror Selection" feature in the Preferences.

• To install PHP Development Tools (PDT), add the http://download.eclipse.org/tools/php/updates/ download site to the list of Eclipse sites.

Appearance customization

Eclipse uses views and perspectives. Perspectives are in fact a set of views; many plugins come with their own views and perspectives. You can define your own perspective; however developing views is harder (you probably need to code).

Font customization is available in Preferences->General->Appearance. However some text seems to be set on a system-level, for example the font on the navigator view.

Viewing Help

Online help is better viewed with an external browser (Firefox) than with Eclipse slow and buggy integrated browser. You can select in Preferences->Help the browser you want to use.

Eclipse and Gentoo amd64

Eclipse currently seems unfortunately very unstable on Gentoo AMD64. Many bugs, some plugins don't work correctly, etc...