Ray Camden kindly gave me access so I could setup a survey using his Soundings Survey application (it rocks!).
I’ve copied the original questions from the Adobe survey and added a few John Farrar sent me after some discussions on this open Aptana support ticket.
Once we collect some data I’ll publish the results on a regular basis (Ray’s app supports PDF, Excel and HTML export!). If we need more data we can do another survey….
The idea here is to collect some feedback on what you (the CFML community) want to see in an IDE. This data will be available to anyone who wants to help support CFEclipse or roll your own IDE.
So spread the word: Link to survey!
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9 Comments
small problem w/the survey:
this shows up as one item in FF.
“Integrated CFC Explorer Integrated CFC Explorer Must Have Very Important Useful Nice To Have Integrated Log viewer”
Paul - thanks for spotting that - I was cutting-n-pasting too late!
something that wasn’t noted that i think would be autocompletion of user functions/classes.
foo(argument1, argument2, [argument3])
much like netbeans.
Regarding RDS Data Explorer
Having a data explorer is important; but in my opinion, -not- having an RDS dependency for it is also important.
I think an RDS dependency for CFML markup is sufficient, the one provided with the ColdFusion extensions for Eclipse do a decent job. I have never gotten DTP to work correctly with any db backend, however it does not have an RDS dependency. Also, Eclipse J2EE and Aptana both have good support for XML, Javascript, CSS and SQL already. The CVS/SVN, Ant, Unit and Mylyn plugins for Eclipse/Aptana are already sufficient, lets focus on making a decent CFML plugin and let the other projects focus on their particular tasks.
The most important features I would like to see implemented are:
- code insight for CFC’s much like Eclipse for Java,
- tag completion like dreamweaver,
- code auto-formatter and validation,
- framework support (maybe i just haven’t learned how to do this in cfe?)
- context sensitive help (currently broken in cfe)
Eclipse + go find the plugins you want doesn’t seem to fit a key market for ColdFusion, which is the immediate productivity market.
It does however fit the model of almost all other open source projects and gnu/linux. Focus on one small task and do it well. The other plugins are great and interoperate well with other plugins. The goal of a CFML plugin should not be to do everything under the sun when other plugins can do it better and are simple to integrate.
SVN, Ant, Unit, etc, could all be bundled as a IDE download, just as there is the Java, J2EE, C++ and Aptana, as well as being available as just a plugin for other eclipses. Or those plugins could be available from the same update site and selectable when installing the plugin.
I would rather them focus on a single aspect and get it done right (what the community is missing right now) then try to do a million things half assed.
Stewart - I completely agree. Eclipse seems to be turning into the IDE platform of choice. And I love the plugin centric architecture. I can tailor my IDE exactly for what *I* want and not what someone thinks I need.
And I don’t think installing an Eclipse plugin is really any different (or more difficult) than installing an extension for Dreamweaver? Ideally I’d love to see a very basic CFML editor. Then as plugins - develop additional tools - Framework explorer, RDS, etc. Plugins could also be developed by vendors for platform specific features.
Personalization is a big bonus to the plugin architecture. My point is that, whether it is Mark, Aptana, Adobe, New Atlanta or anyone else that creates the new plugin, that they focus on the single aspect of making a great CFML plugin instead of trying to duplicate the works done by others who are more capable.
If CFEclipse or whatever plugin we end up with to complete our CF IDE, tries to focus on too many aspects, we will end up with exactly what we have now; a plugin that does a lot, but cannot do anything well.
Aptana or another vendor then, can collect all the plugins, do compatibility testing, add proprietary plugins and final polish. Then release the ‘perfect’ ColdFusion IDE for the people that would rather just place their plastic on the counter than mess with downloading, installing and configuring of their own plugins for a totally customized environment.