Re: [cdt-dev] Unable to install latest nightly build: org.eclipse.launch

[Doug Schaefer <dschaefer@xxxxxxx>]

This is a great discussion and I really want to hear everyone’s opinion so keep it coming. Ideally, it goes to the debug platform/launch UI and I’ve been asked to pursue that by members of the foundation. But that’s a longer term plan.

I think it’s going to be hard to find consensus on this. I think the size of the drop downs prevents 16x16 icons for the buttons from looking good. And these buttons are special since they are more likely to be used regularly. But I’m all for trying different things as long as we keep in mind that the objective is to make Eclipse look good and simple for beginning users. Also keep in mind that the launch bar was released in Mars and users are using it.

The designers I worked with had a number extreme ideas and we pushed back on a number of them. But the main thing they taught me is to empathize with our poor users. As engineers, that’s not always an easy thing for us to do. But when you do it really pays off. I still remember the story of when our product manager first showed it at a dev conference, one of the audience members came up to him after and gave him a hug thanking him. You know you’ve made the right decision when that happens.

Doug

From: <cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Bruno Medeiros <bruno.do.medeiros@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: "CDT General developers list." <cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thursday, December 3, 2015 at 9:44 AM
To: "CDT General developers list." <cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [cdt-dev] Unable to install latest nightly build: org.eclipse.launchbar.core 2.0.0 could not be found

I haven't followed the previous discussions about the Launch Bar closely, so quick question, is the plan for the future to try to include the Launch Bar in the Platform code? Because I also have several reservations about its design, at least in its current form.

I like the idea of having the currently selected launch configuration directly visible in the toolbar. And of having a button that directly opens up the settings dialog for the launch configuration. (and the dropdown button for selecting the launch configuration is bigger than the Platform one, that's good too).

But, the Run/Debug dropdown is a waste of space. Better to have two buttons directly in the toolbar, one to Run, another to Debug. Not just for space, but it also saves two mouse-clicks when user wants to run in a different mode than the current one! (currently with dropdown you need 3 clicks, with Run/Debug buttons, only one click) Is the point of the Run/Debug dropdown to also have other launch modes like External Tools? Even if so, I don't think that justifies the space it takes.

I also agree with the point about icon sizes. It looks really bad if they are different size from the other Platform icons. Maybe the UX experts are right that bigger size is better, but such design principles have to be applied consistently, to the entire application. You cant have some design principles applied to just some part of the UI, and different principles applied to the rest of the UI, without having things look bad.

On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 2:05 AM, Doug Schaefer <dschaefer@xxxxxxx> wrote:

BTW, you can turn off the launch bar in the preference if you don’t like it. It’s in the “Launch Bar” preference page.

From: <cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Doug Schaefer <dschaefer@xxxxxxx>
Reply-To: "CDT General developers list." <cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2015 at 8:50 PM

To: "CDT General developers list." <cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [cdt-dev] Unable to install latest nightly build: org.eclipse.launchbar.core 2.0.0 could not be found

BTW, the buttons keep shrinking so we keep adjusting. They’re a lot smaller than the BB10 days. And I’m happy to adjust things, but as an every day user of it, I think it’s hit the sweet spot.

Also the document Sergey references is 8 years old. Sorry, was off by two years. The UI world has changed a lot since 2007 as UX people finally have influence on the UIs we are building.

The Launch Bar was designed by professional UX designers trying to meet the needs of new users to make Eclipse less overwhelming with the mass of tiny tool bar buttons we throw at them. I understand that most of us are advanced users and are used to the mess and some even like it, but hopefully there are way more beginner users since that’s how we grow the community. Please have them in mind when discussing these issues.

Also, please hold judgement until you’ve tried it. Check out the Arduino video I’ve posted and I’ll post one for Qt once we get it more full featured. The workflows are beautiful and will really help bring new users into Eclipse. And as an advanced user, I can’t live without it, same with others I know who’ve used it extensively.

At any rate, the Launch Bar is intended to be optional. Though how you set the active target for a given launch configuration will still need some UI for launch configurations that need it.

And I’ll make adjustments to the architecture as the need arises. We’re still early days. What I won’t compromise on is tying builds to the things you are trying to launch on. The workflows are just too good when you do that.

Doug.

From: <cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Stefan Xenos <sxenos@xxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: "CDT General developers list." <cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2015 at 8:29 PM
To: "CDT General developers list." <cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [cdt-dev] Unable to install latest nightly build: org.eclipse.launchbar.core 2.0.0 could not be found

> I’ve had a huge amount of praise for the Launch Bar and the simplification of workflows it provides. We

> can play with the look and feel... . But I find Eclipse’s tool bar buttons useless so don’t want to make

> the launch bar equally useless. 

I have to say I've heard the opposite feedback. When I was at BlackBerry, we only had one team member who liked launch bar and he liked it for the workflow benefits, not the giant toolbar buttons. The rest of the team disliked the giant buttons so much they went to elaborate lengths to eliminate the launch bar in order to regain the screen space. My team at Google is much smaller, but we all dislike the big buttons.

I guess we have contradictory anecdotes... so perhaps we shouldn't rely on anecdote.

Maybe you're right and the toolbar buttons in Eclipse are uselessly small. If that's the case, we should update the UI guidelines and make an effort to change all the buttons in Eclipse, not just one toolbar... and before doing such a drastic change, we should make an effort to gather some kind of data (stronger than anecdote) to support the decision.

Until that happens, all toolbars need to follow the UI guidelines. The Eclipse UI is already in a poor state, but if each developer ignores the guidelines they don't like, that makes the UI inconsistent and even worse.

  - Stefan

On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 4:55 PM Sergey Prigogin <eclipse.sprigogin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 7:21 AM, Doug Schaefer <dschaefer@xxxxxxx> wrote:

From: <cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Sergey Prigogin <eclipse.sprigogin@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: "CDT General developers list." <cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Monday, November 30, 2015 at 1:23 AM
To: "CDT General developers list." <cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [cdt-dev] Unable to install latest nightly build: org.eclipse.launchbar.core 2.0.0 could not be found

On Sun, Nov 29, 2015 at 7:10 PM, Doug Schaefer <dschaefer@xxxxxxx> wrote:

I think they are both fundamental. You have heard of Build for Launch, no?

In case of build for launch the is no dependency of the build subsystem on run/debug. Instead run/debug depends on the build subsystem. By introducing a dependency that is going the other way you are breaking this design and getting dangerously close to creating circular references between build and run/debug subsystems.

Except that it doesn’t create a circular dependency. Feel free to look at the code on master where the Qt plug-ins are now using the new build system. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out and how easy it is to switch between building and launching on my local machine and my QNX board.

It doesn't create a circular dependency because of a very good separation between the build API and build semantics in core.resources. It would otherwise.

 

Having the toolchains know about the launch targets they build for has been a huge advantage in the new build system workflows. It’ll even be more interesting when the toolchains tell debug what debugger to use for a given launch target.

Launch targets is not the only thing that can be built. Consider for a example a shared library, which cannot be launched but can be built. The notion of build in Eclipse is even more flexible and supports code generation and other things.

Yes you build shared libraries, but usually you intend to run them somewhere. The idea is to base what you build on where you intend to run them. I’m still working on the mechanism for that. But likely I’d check the project dependencies and look for the most likely target you’re going to run the library on in the future. Or the user could pick the toolchain manually. We’ll see what provides the best workflow. 

Once I get the concept of Launch Target into the Platform post Neon, this conversation wouldn’t be necessary anyway. But, for now, it’s in the launch bar core plug-in.

This is not acceptable. Lauch bar is ugly, violates Eclipse UI guidelines and is shown by default if the corresponding plugins are installed. I understand that you need a place to put interfaces that are used by both, build and launch, but the launchbar plugin is not a right place for them. To preserve the principles of the existing Platform design, these new interfaces have to go into core.resources or another plugin associated with build, not run/debug. If you are concerned with putting immature API into the platform, you can probably avoid that by putting the new interfaces into privately exported packages until they mature.

I appreciate your opinion. And you’re not alone. But you’re also in a pretty small minority. I’ve had a huge amount of praise for the Launch Bar and the simplification of workflows it provides. We can play with the look and feel. But I find Eclipse’s tool bar buttons useless so don’t want to make the launch bar equally useless. And, if you have a pointer to the Eclipse UI guidelines that it’s violating that would be helpful.

See "Toolbar, Toolbar Wizard, and Local Toolbar" section in https://wiki.eclipse.org/User_Interface_Guidelines#Icon_Size_.26_Placement for the size of icons. The top and bottom margins of the launch bar don't conform to org.eclipse.jface.layout.LayoutConstants.

 

I’ve yet to find such a document written in the last decade at least. I can easily make the claim that the current Eclipse UI is hurting us competitively with more "modern looking” IDEs.

But that’s independent of the launch target issue. My intention is to move the launch target classes to the debug.core plug-in. If there was a launch plug-in, I’d move it there since it’s not related to debug anyway, other than debug is a mode supported by the launch system. These classes are actually below the launch bar proper in architecture today ready to be pushed down once I get it up to Platform standards. Again, feel free to take a look at the code.

Would you consider putting the interfaces, which the build has to be aware of, into core.resources? The interfaces would then be considered a part of the build rather than run/debug. Even if the interfaces are not stable yet, they can be put in a package exported with x-friends. This can be done for Neon.

It doesn't make sense that because of the structure of plugin dependencies the Launch Bar gets forced on the CDT users who have no interest in it. Such users, including myself, have to explicitly hide the Launch Bar in every workspace they use. Will this be fixed after 4.6M4?

Not sure what you mean by the target platform definition. The launch bar is in there. Builds are working fine for CDT 9/Neon.

I was seeing compilation errors until I installed Launch Bar. This shouldn't be required since the target platform definition is supposed to take care of that.

You do have this in your cdt-e4.6.target file no?

<location includeAllPlatforms="false" includeConfigurePhase="false" includeMode="planner" includeSource="true" type="InstallableUnit">

<unit id="org.eclipse.launchbar.feature.group" version="0.0.0"/>

<repository location="https://hudson.eclipse.org/cdt/job/launchbar-master/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/repo/target/repository/"/>

</location>

The above piece was in cdt-e4.6.target but the build errors didn't go away even after reloading of the target platform definition. It is possible that the Eclipse restart after installing the launch bar also cleaned the whatever PDE cache that got stale.

-sergey

Doug.

-sergey 

From: <cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Sergey Prigogin <eclipse.sprigogin@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: "CDT General developers list." <cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sunday, November 29, 2015 at 8:19 PM
To: "CDT General developers list." <cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [cdt-dev] Unable to install latest nightly build: org.eclipse.launchbar.core 2.0.0 could not be found

It doesn't make sense that build.core depends on launchbar. Build is more fundamental than launchbar and should not depend on it. If the dependency were legitimate, it would have to be reflected in the target platform definition.

-sergey

On Sun, Nov 29, 2015 at 9:37 AM, Doug Schaefer <dschaefer@xxxxxxx> wrote:

We no longer support CDT master on Mars. It requires API changes that are
in the Neon version of the launch bar. The CDT target file has the list of
all the dependencies you need and where to get them. You could probably
install the Neon launch bar into Mars but I haven¹t tried that and have no
intention to do so.

You get get the Neon launch bar by pointing p2 here:


https://hudson.eclipse.org/cdt/job/launchbar-master/lastSuccessfulBuild/art
ifact/repo/target/repository/

This will all get cleaned up by Neon M4 when we get this into the simrel
repo.

HTH,
Doug.

On 2015-11-29, 3:02 AM, "cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Nathan
Ridge" <cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of zeratul976@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>Hi,
>
>A user reported [1] being unable to install the latest nightly build into
>a Mars.1 installation. I just tried doing the same thing, and ran into
>the same error.
>
>Steps:
>  1. Start with a clean installation of Mars.1 with CDT.
>  2. In 'Install new software', add the nightly update site
>(http://download.eclipse.org/tools/cdt/builds/master/nightly/)
>  3. Select 'CDT Main Features' and press 'Next'
>
>I get the following error:
>
>Cannot complete the install because one or more required items could not
>be found.
>  Software being installed: C/C++ Development Tools 8.8.0.201511281104
>(org.eclipse.cdt.feature.group 8.8.0.201511281104)
>  Missing requirement: GCC support for CDT Build Core 1.0.0.201511281104
>(org.eclipse.cdt.build.gcc.core 1.0.0.201511281104) requires 'bundle
>org.eclipse.launchbar.core 2.0.0' but it could not be found
>  Cannot satisfy dependency:
>    From: C/C++ Development Tools 8.8.0.201511281104
>(org.eclipse.cdt.feature.group 8.8.0.201511281104)
>    To: org.eclipse.cdt.gnu.build.feature.group [8.8.0.201511281104]
>  Cannot satisfy dependency:
>    From: C/C++ GNU Toolchain Build Support 8.8.0.201511281104
>(org.eclipse.cdt.gnu.build.feature.group 8.8.0.201511281104)
>    To: org.eclipse.cdt.build.gcc.core [1.0.0.201511281104]
>
>In another thread [2] I reported getting the same error when trying to
>install a CDT I built myself. I had assumed that was a mistake in how I
>built it, but since the same error is happening when trying to install a
>nightly, it looks like that's not the case.
>
>Are we (the user in question, and myself) doing something wrong in how we
>are trying to install a nightly build? Or are the nightly builds broken?
>
>Thanks,
>Nate
>
>[1] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=479888#c10
>[2] https://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/cdt-dev/msg29871.html
>
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--

Bruno Medeiros
https://twitter.com/brunodomedeiros