Hi all, The idea of making the Eclipse Workspace more flexible by allowing arbitrary resources identified via URI has been part of Eclipse since 3.2 through the Eclipse File System (EFS) [1][2].
While I really like that idea, my experience has shown, though, that it is not sufficient to try and "remotify" resources without the applications actually knowing (just as Scott says). Even in the Platform itself, not all components have migrated properly after 2 years [3], and due to the fact that the Workspace tries to perform a deep global refresh, very bad Performance issues arise when a user tries to link a slow remote file system into his workspace [4]. There are architectural issues with the way the Workspace currently works (and is expected to work by old-style clients), which cannot be "remotified" properly [5]. So, I agree it makes sense to push down some network / connection related concepts into the Platform and make them First Class Citicens. But I doubt it's right doing so on the IResource level. It's not only much work like Jeff says, I think it's impossible getting it right when trying to remain backward compatible. I think that users do have an understanding of "local" vs. "remote" things and what it means to "import" or "synchronize", as well as be aware of issues like latency or faulty connections. So, instead of trying to hide the fact that things are remote, remote concepts need to be made more explicit -- sometimes up to the Application level, just as Scott says. An idea like WebOS is great but it looks like that's exactly what it does -- making every client of the OS aware of network-related issues from the very start. We can't go and plug this in under the existing Workspace. [1] EFS Overview http://wiki.eclipse.org/EFS [2] EFS migration guide http://help.eclipse.org/ganymede/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/port ing/3.2/incompatibilities.html#nonLocalResources [3] Ant Editor doesn't work with remote files linked in through EFS https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=220829 [4] Eclipse hangs when importing a project that contains a linked resource for a large, slow, efs-ssh-shared file system https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=219164 [5] ResourcesPlugin performs too many operations in its start() method https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=181998 Cheers, -- Martin Oberhuber, Senior Member of Technical Staff, Wind River Target Management Project Lead, DSDP PMC Member http://www.eclipse.org/dsdp/tm _______________________________________________ eclipse-incubator-e4-dev mailing list [email protected] https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/eclipse-incubator-e4-dev
