There are twelve packages currently listed
on the downloads page, not counting the promoted ones. Are so
many packages actually a benefit to users? We try to define
packages based on developer profiles, but real developers
rarely fit a profile. One of the most common complaints that I
have seen on forums are related to difficulties in getting an
Eclipse installation that has all the pieces that the
developer requires. The ironic thing is that we go through a
lot of trouble to define a common repository with components
that are known to work with each other, but then fragment the
result into a dozen different packages.
Would user experience be better if there
was only one Eclipse package on the main download site that
had pretty much everything that’s in the aggregated
repository?
Some of the reasons for not doing that…
1. The package would be too large.
With modern download speeds, I suspect most users would rather
wait a few minutes longer for Eclipse to download than spend
time later trying to figure out how to install the missing
pieces. The disk space difference is also inconsequential
these days.
2. The users prefer to not include
pieces in their installation that they don’t use. I can
see that being the case for some advanced Eclipse users, but I
don’t believe this holds true across the user base. I suspect
that most users would rather spend time on their development
project than tuning their Eclipse installation.
3. Too many plugins in one installation
leads to poor user experience. If there are problems
like that, we should be identifying and fixing them.
Thoughts?
- Konstantin
