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[cross-project-issues-dev] Callisto 3.2RC4a experience

Summary: Much better - the experience has greatly improved since the last time I tried this.

I downloaded the 3.2RC7 SDK first, since I want to do plug-in development, then I used Update manager to get the rest. From home it took 2 and a half minutes to get the SDK and about the same to get WST + prerequisites (~650KB/sec cable modem). From work it took 30 seconds to get the SDK and another 60 seconds or so to get the rest (T3? plus local mirror).

Issue #1 (minor):
People getting the Platform runtime will get it faster, though I wonder if there isn't a way to use pack200 for even that? Maybe a very small installer that could bootstrap the rest?

Issue #2:
In the Update Site Mirrors dialog, the default is "Callisto Discovery Site" (I assume that's Canada)  and the second choice for me is "[United States] University of Texas at Arlington (http)". This is different from the mirror list on the download page for the SDK, which gives them in this order (2 and 3 are random):
   1. (default) "[United States] SAS Institute Inc. (http)" (*)
   2. (random) "[United States] OSU Open Source Lab (http)"
   3. (random) "[United States] University of Texas at Arlington (http)"
   ...
   37. (last) "Main eclipse.org downloads area (http)"
Shouldn't the two mirror lists be somewhat similar, with the Main server in Canada *not* being the default?
*Note: SAS has a local mirror accessible only to SAS employees since we have so many people inside the company downloading Eclipse. It shows up on the main download page for the SDK, but doesn't show up on the Update Site Mirror page - why?

In the update manager, the 'add required' button worked like a charm, though I wonder if a naïve user will know that they need to press that button.

Issue #3 (minor):
For future releases consider always adding the prerequisites and doing away with that button. Or at least add some instructions to press the Select Required button in the error message.

When I select a mirror and continue, the Search Results dialog comes up in about 8 seconds. Very nice.

Issue #4:
The feature names are quite verbose. For example, "Web Standard Tools (WST) Project 1.5.0.v200605221430-U-z2nUPIcqVPbf1". I can imagine the naïve user going "wtf?". I suggest only printing the first three numbers in the version ("1.5.0") by default, with a checkbox for developers to show the full version qualifier.

Issue #5 (minor): When you select a feature the search results dialog gives you a little description of that feature right below the tree view. For example if you select "Web and J2EE Development" this description appears: "A platform and tools for developing XML, WebServices, and J2EE Applications". That's nice, but some of the descriptions need work, for example if you select "W3C Sac Feature" the scription says "W3C Sac Feature". I don't know what that means. A description that at least explains the acronyms would be helpful.

Issue #6 (minor):
  WST Common Core (1.5.0.v200605151622--AXrVWXWMpHisqS) requires feature "org.eclipse.jem (1.2.0)", or equivalent.
  WST Web Core (1.5.0.v200605151622--3YIAAYAUFUETIN) requires feature "org.eclipse.jem (1.2.0)", or equivalent.
When I click "Select Required" it selects the whole "Visual Editor" feature. Wasn't there a jem-only feature that was smaller available at some time?

Issue #7:
When I go to the Feature License screen, the licenses are a little different. For example, the license for Visual Editor 1.2.0 says "March 17, 2005" and the license for Graphical Editing Framework 3.2.0 says "January 28, 2004". The dates aren't the only thing that is different. They are formatted differently, and contain different text. For example the GEF one says "Java and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both." but the VE one doesn't say that. I didn't check all of them, but I would expect them all to be the same.

Issue #8:
When I continue on to the Installation screen, it says I can select a feature and change the location where the feature will be installed. All of the default to the Eclipse install location, which in my case is "C:\Program Files\Eclipse". This is bad practice because when somebody downloads a new version of Eclipse (e.g., from 3.1 to 3.2) they are encouraged to erase or rename their old version and re-install Eclipse in a clean directory, right? So they'd have to re-install all the Callisto projects as well. I suggest making the default, or at least making it much easier to specify, that these features go into some other directory. For example I changed all mine to go to "C:\Program Files\Eclipse Extensions\Callisto". To do that I had to click Change Location, add a new location, navigate to it, create a new folder, etc.... Then I had to select each feature and click 4 times to change it to go to the new location I just set up. Being able to multi-select the features would have
saved many clicks though that's something a naïve user wouldn't necessary know how to do.

Issue #9 (minor):
Required space was unknown for all features. What's the use of printing required and available space if it's always going to be unknown? I think the required space should be automatically figured out by the build process.

Issue #10:
All features were unsigned and got a warning when they were being installed in a Feature Verification dialog. I clicked on the Help button, and it was no help at all- the topics were 'About: workbench/perspectives/workbench management' and under Dynamic help was 'Feature Type Factory', 'org.eclipse.update.core', 'Changes required when adopting 3.0 APIs', and other non sequiturs. If the features aren't going to be signed then there should be some help about what that means to the end user.

Everything appeared to install and run ok but I didn't spend too much time trying it out.

Conclusion:
None of these issues looks like a show stopper. Congrats on greatly improving the user experience with Callisto 3.2RC4a !

If anyone wants bugzilla entries for any of these let me know the right component and I'll enter them.



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