Essential and Not so Essential Eclipse Helios Plugins

Ever since Eclipse Helios (3.6) was released, I’ve been wanting to do a full clean Eclipse install. I didn’t get around to it until this weekend. During that upgrade, I also made a recap of the different plugins I had installed on my old Eclipse. This post is a short summary of the plugins I use, have used and might use.

Not all plugins will be useful for any one, but I’m sure you’ll find something you want to try out in the list. I’ve also included links to the update sites that you can immediately paste into the Eclipse software manager.

Essential Keepers

I was surprised at the fairly small number of plugins I wanted to keep in my new Eclipse install. However, those who made the cut, I consider essential. I wouldn’t be able to create my projects without them:

  • Subclipse: If Subversion is your version control system, this plugin is the most essential you’ll install (update site)
  • EclEmma is a great way to visualize your unit test coverage and find blank spots (update site)
  • Google App Engine and GWT plugins: I’m having a hate/love relationship with those tools. I don’t like how they take over your project with their inflexibility, but when they work, they work and don’t get in your way (update site)
  • Vaadin: Not essential for every one, but I am developing a Vaadin application after all. The plugin configures your workspace and also has easy access to handy tools, such as widgetset compilation (update site)

Freshly Added

I’ll also be adding a few plugins that I have experimented with and I think will be useful enough:

  • Groovy plugin: For some reason I keep ignoring Groovy. That really needs to change as it seems to be a great mix of Jave and Python influences (update site)
  • Easyb: I’m liking this framework for its top-down approach. Start by creating user stories, fill in the test code later. (and it’s written in Groovy, which gives me another reason to learn Groovy) I will probably be writing more on Easyb in the future (update site)

Removed Plugins

There are also a few plugins that I didn’t reinstall. Mostly because they are pretty memory and processor intense. They are useful, but I just couldn’t justify keeping them around.

  • Spring IDE, I’m probably not going to install this one as I’m phasing out Spring for my current hobby project. I also have a feeling SpringSource is starting to force us to download the standalone version of those tools, not the plugins. Which I don’t like (the Spring IDE org site seems to have disappeared of the face of the earth)
  • m2eclipse: Although I could really love this plugin. It was way too slow for me, so I’m not reinstalling this and I’m sticking with “mvn eclipse:eclipse” although that’s not perfect either.
  • AspectJ integration: I installed this to use the annotation base dependency injection in Spring. It never worked quite right. I’m not sure if this was caused by AspectJ or the SpringIDE. I tried to figure it out, but when I realized I was loosing more time than I gained, I decided to just drop Spring dependency injection altogether (using the Vaadin data model, there aren’t too many dependencies anyway)

That’s my list. Feel free to share your favorites in the comments.