Home » Language IDEs » ServerTools (WTP) » WTP 1.0.2 -- dream or reality ? + Recurring quality issues with WTP
| WTP 1.0.2 -- dream or reality ? + Recurring quality issues with WTP [message #167750] |
Thu, 27 April 2006 17:05  |
Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: Laurentd75_nosp_am.yahoo.fr
Hi there,
I could swear I have seen WTP 1.0.2 RC builds before on the downloads page
(http://download.eclipse.org/webtools/downloads/), but it seems they've
suddenly disappeared ?!
Or is it me ? Did I dream those ??
And what is the maintenance status of the 1.0 stream, considering there
are MANY bugs outstanding, which are also show-stoppers for most of them...
Anyway, to be quite honest, I'm really starting to lose interest quick in
WTP and consider switching to NetBeans.
I mean, excuse my speaking bluntly, but your product is literally RIDDLED
with bugs, many of which seem REGRESSION BUGS to me, and you seem to care
much more about your "API for adopters" and developing new features for
the 1.5 stream rather than about fixing long existing bugs.
I've been following this project for more than a year, and believe it or
not, but the version that caused me the less problems (and that we
continue to use for lack of a more reliable release version for most of
our projects!!) is WTP 1.0M3 !
Fact is there are so many bugs in the 0.7 and 1.0 streams that we just
cannot use them for serious development.
Just two examples that tend to show this product is not properly
engineered nor tested (sorry guys, but after one year of trying dozens of
builds and getting from disappointment to more disappointment, I've lost
faith in your ability to deliver):
- TEETHING JAVA BUILD PATH PROBLEMS, with either the "Web app container"
or the "Server Runtime container" going suddenly missing or being empty,
and there being no cure other than luck by trying things such as disable
autobuild, clean project, close project and reopen, rebuild, and sometimes
you have to copy and paste a new JAR into the WEB-INF/lib so that WTP
suddenly restores the "Webapp container" in the build path. Try sharing
your project under CVS with others, or export your project as ZIP and try
to import it in another installation of Eclipse WTP, and you'll see what I
mean...
- Recurring problems with general XML editing, with the "error while
processing dirty regions" issue that has started to reappear lately. Not
to mention the poor performance for JSP editing and validation.
And there are MANY more like that, like problems with publishing,
structural changes with each release (build directory, project settings
files and src/build directories) and I'm just tired of all this.
I know all of you are working hard and that many of you are contributing
in your own time for free, and I am really thankful for this. However, I
believe that this choice is a commitment that bears a responsibility
towards the community to deliver what you promised, and to warrant a
certain level of quality. This is far more important I think than adhering
to strict release dates or putting a higher priority on an API that most
users don't care about anyway. I think what most people care about is not
a release date promise or an API for future extensions, what they care
about is a usable product.
These are just my 'unedited' thoughts and my personal experience, for the
little bit they're worth. And again, sorry for speaking my mind honestly
and quite bluntly, but I'm sure I'm not alone out there to have such
thoughts.
Regards,
Laurent
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| Re: WTP 1.0.2 -- dream or reality ? + Recurring quality issues with WTP [message #167826 is a reply to message #167750] |
Thu, 27 April 2006 21:23  |
 David Williams
Messages: 722
Registered: July 2009 |
Senior Member |
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On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 13:05:30 -0400, Laurent Denanot
<Laurentd75_nosp_am@yahoo.fr> wrote:
> Or is it me ? Did I dream those ??
>
Laurent, no need to sugar coat it. :)
I do appreciate the criticism, and, the many contributions that have
come from the community in the form of patches and bug reports and even
the occasional frustration based rant (as long as only occasional :)
And I will take responsibility for this "disappearing" build ...
totally my fault for starting the copy and replication process while I
finished
my final testing. And, my final testing revealed a bug I felt needed some
investigation. (bug 138825).
The files are back, and that particular bug, at least, will be fixed soon.
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| Re: WTP 1.0.2 -- dream or reality ? + Recurring quality issues with WTP [message #167842 is a reply to message #167826] |
Fri, 28 April 2006 08:17 |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: Laurentd75_nosp_am.yahoo.fr
David Williams wrote:
> Laurent, no need to sugar coat it. :)
> I do appreciate the criticism, and, the many contributions that have
> come from the community in the form of patches and bug reports and even
> the occasional frustration based rant (as long as only occasional :)
Hi David,
Thanks for the sweet answer to my sugar-coated salty remarks :) And yes,
my rants are only occasional (about my second in a year's time...). And
it's probably the first time I've gone so "ballistic" about WTP and let my
bad thoughts badly loose, but truly I sometimes get the impression you are
prioritizing the "marketing" side of things and concentrating on the WTP
API and new features instead of fixing serious and recurring bugs that
will not only stop adoption, but also the mere use of WTP !! And I think
the comparison to Netbeans is a "healthy" thing to be done... I've always
been rather pro-Eclipse myself, but I must admit that Netbeans 5.0 is both
an impressive and comprehensive platform (much more than Eclipse+WTP), and
it seems much more reliable too, although I haven't been testing it
thoroughly... So, I don't know if "only the fittest shall survive", but I
feel WTP still has a long way to come...
> And I will take responsibility for this "disappearing" build ...
> totally my fault for starting the copy and replication process while I
> finished
> my final testing. And, my final testing revealed a bug I felt needed some
> investigation. (bug 138825).
> The files are back, and that particular bug, at least, will be fixed soon.
Thanks for this info, this "disappearing" build is no big deal, only I
thought I must have dreamt it when I saw it was gone ! ;-)
Laurent
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| Re: WTP 1.0.2 -- dream or reality ? + Recurring quality issues with WTP [message #167857 is a reply to message #167842] |
Fri, 28 April 2006 09:06 |
Philip Barr
Messages: 8
Registered: July 2009 |
Junior Member |
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I fully agree with you Laurent. I introduced Eclipse to my company when I
started (they were using JDeveloper) and have suffered a fair amount of
embarrassment ever since due to the quality issues with WTP. I regularly
have to answer calls from developers asking me why the file they just
updated hasn't been recognised or why there are red crosses everywhere. I go
through my stock answers:
Refresh the project
Clean the project
Publish the project
Remove and Add the project to the server
Go to where Eclipse stores the published files (it's moved now, by the way)
and find out what's going on
Do the above in a different order.
The problem is that these developers associate the problems with Eclipse,
not WTP, and have been put off Eclipse altogether, no matter how much I
evangelise it.
Please, please, please give us a solid, stable build of WTP before adding
any more features or API. I don't want to lose even more credibility by
saying, "ok, that didn't work, anyone heard of Netbeans?"
And that's besides the fact that I've been a long term Eclipse fan.
By the way - the download for WTP 1.0.2 says, "Unable to connect to the
database server at this time." Hopefully just a temporary issue.
"Laurent Denanot" <Laurentd75_nosp_am@yahoo.fr> wrote in message
news:8e1f6c3d712616c591235b3cb8cbcdee$1@www.eclipse.org...
> David Williams wrote:
>
>> Laurent, no need to sugar coat it. :)
>
>> I do appreciate the criticism, and, the many contributions that have
>> come from the community in the form of patches and bug reports and even
>> the occasional frustration based rant (as long as only occasional :)
>
> Hi David,
>
> Thanks for the sweet answer to my sugar-coated salty remarks :) And yes,
> my rants are only occasional (about my second in a year's time...). And
> it's probably the first time I've gone so "ballistic" about WTP and let my
> bad thoughts badly loose, but truly I sometimes get the impression you are
> prioritizing the "marketing" side of things and concentrating on the WTP
> API and new features instead of fixing serious and recurring bugs that
> will not only stop adoption, but also the mere use of WTP !! And I think
> the comparison to Netbeans is a "healthy" thing to be done... I've always
> been rather pro-Eclipse myself, but I must admit that Netbeans 5.0 is both
> an impressive and comprehensive platform (much more than Eclipse+WTP), and
> it seems much more reliable too, although I haven't been testing it
> thoroughly... So, I don't know if "only the fittest shall survive", but I
> feel WTP still has a long way to come...
>
>
>> And I will take responsibility for this "disappearing" build ...
>> totally my fault for starting the copy and replication process while I
>> finished
>> my final testing. And, my final testing revealed a bug I felt needed some
>> investigation. (bug 138825).
>> The files are back, and that particular bug, at least, will be fixed
>> soon.
>
> Thanks for this info, this "disappearing" build is no big deal, only I
> thought I must have dreamt it when I saw it was gone ! ;-)
>
> Laurent
>
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| Re: WTP 1.0.2 -- dream or reality ? + Recurring quality issues with WTP [message #167909 is a reply to message #167750] |
Fri, 28 April 2006 18:26 |
Arthur Ryman
Messages: 92
Registered: July 2009 |
Member |
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Laurent Denanot wrote:
>
> Hi there,
>
> I could swear I have seen WTP 1.0.2 RC builds before on the downloads
> page (http://download.eclipse.org/webtools/downloads/), but it seems
> they've suddenly disappeared ?!
>
> Or is it me ? Did I dream those ??
>
> And what is the maintenance status of the 1.0 stream, considering there
> are MANY bugs outstanding, which are also show-stoppers for most of them...
>
> Anyway, to be quite honest, I'm really starting to lose interest quick
> in WTP and consider switching to NetBeans.
>
> I mean, excuse my speaking bluntly, but your product is literally
> RIDDLED with bugs, many of which seem REGRESSION BUGS to me, and you
> seem to care much more about your "API for adopters" and developing new
> features for the 1.5 stream rather than about fixing long existing bugs.
>
> I've been following this project for more than a year, and believe it or
> not, but the version that caused me the less problems (and that we
> continue to use for lack of a more reliable release version for most of
> our projects!!) is WTP 1.0M3 !
>
> Fact is there are so many bugs in the 0.7 and 1.0 streams that we just
> cannot use them for serious development.
>
> Just two examples that tend to show this product is not properly
> engineered nor tested (sorry guys, but after one year of trying dozens
> of builds and getting from disappointment to more disappointment, I've
> lost faith in your ability to deliver):
>
> - TEETHING JAVA BUILD PATH PROBLEMS, with either the "Web app container"
> or the "Server Runtime container" going suddenly missing or being empty,
> and there being no cure other than luck by trying things such as disable
> autobuild, clean project, close project and reopen, rebuild, and
> sometimes you have to copy and paste a new JAR into the WEB-INF/lib so
> that WTP suddenly restores the "Webapp container" in the build path. Try
> sharing your project under CVS with others, or export your project as
> ZIP and try to import it in another installation of Eclipse WTP, and
> you'll see what I mean...
>
> - Recurring problems with general XML editing, with the "error while
> processing dirty regions" issue that has started to reappear lately. Not
> to mention the poor performance for JSP editing and validation.
>
> And there are MANY more like that, like problems with publishing,
> structural changes with each release (build directory, project settings
> files and src/build directories) and I'm just tired of all this.
>
> I know all of you are working hard and that many of you are contributing
> in your own time for free, and I am really thankful for this. However, I
> believe that this choice is a commitment that bears a responsibility
> towards the community to deliver what you promised, and to warrant a
> certain level of quality. This is far more important I think than
> adhering to strict release dates or putting a higher priority on an API
> that most users don't care about anyway. I think what most people care
> about is not a release date promise or an API for future extensions,
> what they care about is a usable product.
>
> These are just my 'unedited' thoughts and my personal experience, for
> the little bit they're worth. And again, sorry for speaking my mind
> honestly and quite bluntly, but I'm sure I'm not alone out there to have
> such thoughts.
>
>
> Regards,
> Laurent
>
>
Laurent,
As one of the founders of the project, and the lead of the WST
subproject, I can tell you that quality is my #1 concern and my #1 cause
of frustration. I agree with your observations. Anyone on the WTP team
can tell you that for the last few months I have been giving them the
message to focus on quality and hold off on new features and API. I hope
1.0.2 is better than 1.0.1, and that 1.5 is better than 1.0.2. We are
starting up a 1.0.3 stream now to fix the critical problems that show up
on 1.0.2. We want to deliver a rock solid product.
Any help you can provide is appreciated. Rants are fine but great bug
reports are better, and patches even better yet. WTP is a community
effort. It will be as good as the community makes it.
-- Arthur
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| Re: WTP 1.0.2 -- dream or reality ? + Recurring quality issues with WTP [message #168022 is a reply to message #167902] |
Sat, 29 April 2006 16:00 |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: thisisnot.mymail.com
I'd like to say a couple of things as well. We started using WTP from
before 0.7 . I must say that we had internally great pains before it and
in putting together a coherent build environment and have sticked with
0.7 because of it (also the multi module support hit us a bit
unexpectedly, will that get addressed now with eclipse 3.2?). Anyhow,
although it was a very difficult period I must say that 1.5 is much
better quality and feature wise and I believe the WTP team made the
right choice. Now outside vendors will customize WTP and that will
accelerate its usage and will put more programmers on the job of fixing
what's wrong with it. (That is I hope they will, it's their choice but I
hope they'll return something to the platform).
If WTP was set out to make a NetBeans clone, we'd be still doing stuff
with NB. WTP is a platform for all future eclipse J2EE/J5EE plugins and
that probably meant it was more important to push more in trying to
cover the entire Java EE spectrum rather then build a rock stable JSP
editor.
So, I'd say WTP folks weren't very gentle with us users focusing on
quantity of features rather then quality (which wasn't always that bad
to be honest) and probably 1.5 will focus more on quality (very probable
as I think big companies don't sell buggy products). I hope the
foundations you laid are going to bring innovation and more quality
tools in the future.
PS. I'd like to see the WTP and eclipse folks help the Maven2 community
with a the maven-eclipse-plugin in getting sure it generates valid J2EE
projects and get a quality round-trip between these tools.
Also, I like the Callisto effort! Will a WTP installed via Callisto be
updated with time or is a snapshot thing?
Srgjan
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| Re: WTP 1.0.2 -- dream or reality ? + Recurring quality issues with WTP [message #168465 is a reply to message #167750] |
Thu, 04 May 2006 06:27 |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: marx.nospam_wasko.pl
I use WTP mainly to JSP editing and there is not so much missing in WTP
to be very good for my job. Hovewer some bugs (like JSP validation)
doesn't help at work ;) and are unfixed few months.
What I miss is clear WTP versioning - today I see 1.0.2, 1.5RC1a and
1.5M6 - suprisingly 1.5RC1a is the newest (?)
There is also need to fix the most basic bugs before adding new features.
And I really don't like changing structure of project every few version.
Because of that I use Tomcat Project from Sysdeo instead of Dynamic Web
Project (or whatever it's called in new releases) - Sysdeo is much much
simpler and always work stable.
Marx
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| Re: WTP 1.0.2 -- dream or reality ? + Recurring quality issues with WTP [message #168733 is a reply to message #167909] |
Sat, 06 May 2006 19:36 |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: laurentd75_no.spam.yahoo.fr
Arthur Ryman wrote:
> Laurent,
> As one of the founders of the project, and the lead of the WST
> subproject, I can tell you that quality is my #1 concern and my #1 cause
> of frustration. I agree with your observations. Anyone on the WTP team
> can tell you that for the last few months I have been giving them the
> message to focus on quality and hold off on new features and API. I hope
> 1.0.2 is better than 1.0.1, and that 1.5 is better than 1.0.2. We are
> starting up a 1.0.3 stream now to fix the critical problems that show up
> on 1.0.2. We want to deliver a rock solid product.
> Any help you can provide is appreciated. Rants are fine but great bug
> reports are better, and patches even better yet. WTP is a community
> effort. It will be as good as the community makes it.
> -- Arthur
Hi Arthur, and thanks for taking the time to give these explanations.
Again, I certainly understand that you have all been striving to deliver
the best platform you can, and I trust that everyone wants quality above
all.
However, the sad and naked fact is you have been consistently failing in
delivering a stable product, and WTP 1.0.2 again demonstrates this: again,
the same build path problems are recurring, with the "Webapp libraries"
and "Server runtime' containers suddenly loosing their contents, and the
only remedy being to try all variations of witchcraft like closing and
cleaning projects, or deleting/adding server runtimes. And I've seen this
in the 1.5RC1a release too.
And I'm not alone thinking this way, just read Frits Jalvingh's post and
others in this thread and you will see that my concerns are shared by many
users.
So, let's face it please, there is a problem somewhere down your release
engineering / testing procedures, and the quality assurance is not here.
Something has to change, there is a clear need to review procedures and
perform extensive tests and code audits.
Now, on the help side: I did provide a couple of bug reports, but here
again I share Frits Jalvingh's view: it shouldn't be up to the end users
to report basic bugs such as build path problems, these should clearly be
detected by basic tests prior to release. And I feel particular care
should be put on regression tests. And I suppose people get a little tired
when they report major bugs and realise that these bugs are not getting
fixed properly.
As to patches: you can't reasonably expect of the majority of users to dig
into code and provide patches. Most users like me won't bother because
either they don't have the necessary skills, and/or they just can't or
won't invest the time to do so. To be frank with you, I did consider
getting into WTP, but was discouraged by a numeber of factors: first and
above all, while being reasonably proficient at Java/J2EE development, I
know next to nothing about the Eclipse APIs and architecture, so I would
have needed to invest quite a lot of time into learning the architecture
and APIs. And even then, I saw there was no help available for setting up
a WTP development environment and test it, and that there was very little
design documentation available, and also that the code was (for the small
parts I sampled) poorly documented. Maybe it's just my impression, maybe
I didn't look hard enough at the time, I don't know, but this is the
impression I got so I stopped right there.
Anyway, this is another point you have to understand: you made your own
choice, you made your own free decision to invest your time into this
project, but you have to understand (and respect) that others won't
necessarily be able or want to make the same choice, that most users don't
like to feel obliged to take part in the development just because they use
your product. This product is your own responsibility, not the users'. You
made the commitment to deliver this product yourselves, and it's only
natural then that users expect that you will "live up to your promise",
and that you should be accountable for it. I think this is a general issue
with the open-source ecosystem: project founders building a small team and
committing to develop a project that is often too ambitious for them, and
then relying on the community to help them get it done. Of course, in a
way it is how the community works, but you should't put that much reliance
on others, you should make sure you can actually deliver what you said you
would. Quite simply, it's a simple case of commitment and trust. You
committed to something, and people have put their trust in you, and expect
you to honour your commitment. An important thing you have to keep in mind
too is that many users like myself are building plans on the outcome of
projects like yours, and are making commitments based on the outcome of
your own commitments. Many people have planned to roll out WTP as a
development environment for commercial projects in their companies, and
they end up feeling quite embarassed, if not bitter, to find that they
can't even have a stable release with basic features.
I am aware my point may come out as quite harsh and unfriendly, but I
suspect it is shared by many people, and I think it is necessary for you
to be aware of your users' expectations and feelings with regards to your
product, even it it hurts your feelings.
Lastly, as I've already said before, don't get me wrong: I am well aware
of the efforts you are all putting into this, and I am extremely thankful
to you for it. But there are times when we need to be able to raise such
important issues in a frank and direct manner, even if it is a little
unpleasant.
In summary, I do feel I raised an important issue here, that cannot be
entirely assimilated to (or dismissed as) "just another rant": there is a
major (and undisputed I think) quality issue with WTP, and clearly
something has to be done to address it. And I'm sorry I am unable to
propose magical remedies, other than hint that there may be something
wrong with your internal development/testing/release procedures, and that
you should look into that.
Kind Regards,
Laurent
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| Re: WTP 1.0.2 -- dream or reality ? + Recurring quality issues with WTP [message #168894 is a reply to message #168733] |
Wed, 10 May 2006 12:29 |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: patric.rufflar.de
Laurent Denanot wrote:
> However, the sad and naked fact is you have been consistently failing in
> delivering a stable product, and WTP 1.0.2 again demonstrates this: again,
> the same build path problems are recurring, with the "Webapp libraries"
> and "Server runtime' containers suddenly loosing their contents, and the
> only remedy being to try all variations of witchcraft like closing and
> cleaning projects, or deleting/adding server runtimes. And I've seen this
> in the 1.5RC1a release too.
I fully agree with Laurent. I see critical problems at the jsp parser
which is for me one of the most important things for a J2EE IDE. The
parser fails on almost every second jsp (reporting false positive errors
and vice versa or validating a document "forever") of our product.
Please have a look at the bugreports on this issue. Even beginners will
stumbe on these problems. And I believe this frustrates many people.
> Lastly, as I've already said before, don't get me wrong: I am well aware
> of the efforts you are all putting into this, and I am extremely thankful
> to you for it. But there are times when we need to be able to raise such
> important issues in a frank and direct manner, even if it is a little
> unpleasant.
I would also thank you for your effort. I believe in the eclipse project
and I hope WTP will reach the same quality as its platform.
Best Regards,
Patric Rufflar
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| Re: WTP 1.0.2 -- dream or reality ? + Recurring quality issues with WTP [message #171210 is a reply to message #168894] |
Thu, 15 June 2006 06:21 |
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I would like to thank Patric for opening bug reports for the
problems he's encountered and working with us to help narrow down
exactly where the failure points are. Regrettably, not all of his
bugs have been fixed yet, but we've hopefully made a good start.
If nothing else he's earned his own saved query at the bottom of my
Bugzilla pages.
--
- Nitin
_
Nitin Dahyabhai
Eclipse Web Tools Platform
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