Eclipse Ganymede is out

Eclipse Ganymede is the next big release of major projects under the Eclipse.org umbrella, after Calisto and Europe. It brings together 23 projects, the best known of which are WTP, Mylyn, BIRT and, of course, the core platform, officially Eclipse project 3.4. Altogether, it delivers an impressive 18 million lines of code.

I was most interested in the improvements to JDT, the Java Development Tools. You’ll find a detailed rundown in the article or on the usual New and Noteworthy page. The most interesting changes to me are in the compiler, which should make better use of multicore processors, and the debugger, which should make it easier to move through the code you’re tracing. InfoQ covers these changes and more.

• Compiler enhancements — Compilation can now be spread across multiple cores rather than being able to only utilize one, compiler problem detection has been improved, CLDC 1.1 class file output support and class folders outside of the workspace have been added
• New refactorings — There is a new Extract Class refactoring, which extracts a group of variables into a class and preserves member access. In addition, refactoring that causes potentially broken references to binary classes will now show a warning, which can be used to prevent accidental refactoring that other clients might rely on
• Java Editor upgrades — Breadcrumbs which show the path to the current item, richer hover dialogs for Java problems and Javadoc, several Content Assist improvements, new Quick Assists and a set SWT widget templates are among the new features added
• Java Debugger improvements — Object inspector embedded in the variable hover, execution environment description files, launch configurations as part of search results and the ability to wait for remote debug connections are new in this release
• Other UI enhancements — JUnit test execution time, Call Hierarchy for fields and types, a Runnable JAR export wizard, and more Java search options are now available

There’s also a short video called What I like about Eclipse 3.4 JDT, which shows the new Extract Class refactoring and breadcrumb navigation.

Sources

• InfoQ
  Eclipse Ganymede released