Update -> b0rken eclipse

Dimi Paun dimi at lattica.com
Mon May 11 05:18:51 UTC 2009


On Sun, 2009-05-10 at 00:25 -0400, Andrew Overholt wrote:
> Also, why is it so hard to install with the Update
> Manager?  I'm curious both as a Fedora maintainer and an upstream
> person. 

OK, so this is a partial story (now that I have things working, 
I can not easily reproduce all problems). But check this out.

Problem: you are a Java developer and need the Web Server Tools

 1. You go to Software Updates ...
 2. There's no WST anywhere, so you click on "Manage Sites", which
    looks something like this:
    http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/52/screenshotavailablesoft.png

    WTF?!? Which one do I pick? You try to parse the URLs, there's
    no "web" in there it seems.

 3. So you say, OK, let's add the site:
    http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/2415/screenshotaddsite.png

    Great, but where do I find it, how? You go on the eclipse.org
    site, you click around, the information is hard to find.
    You find lots of complicated download pages, you lose a lot of
    time finding the silly URL, finally you discover it on the
    download page and wonder why you didn't find it the first 2-3
    times you looked at it.

 4. You add the site, and try to install the WST. You expand it
    and you see this:
    http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/881/screenshotsoftwareupdat.png

    Dali? Patch Features? WTF?!? All I want are the Web tools!

 5. So you expand one more level to try to find what you're looking for:
    http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/881/screenshotsoftwareupdat.png

    Holly crap! What do you pick from there? This would make a grown
    man cry :) So you go and pick a few safe things that seem reasonable
    (Java EE Developer Tools, Eclipse XML Editor and Tools, etc)

 6. Then you click "Install":
    http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/5549/screenshotprogressinfor.png

    This is great. So it looks up dependencies, etc. But wait!
    At the end of the install, I get a small dialog telling me that the
    install failed due to missing dependencies (despite the dependency
    check saying it was OK)! You parse the cryptic names, and install
    some EMF that might seem to help. Try again. Fail! Add GFE, that    
    might help. Fail. Similar error at the _end_ of the install.

    WTF? What next? Maybe instead of installing all 4 features at once,
    lets try to do it one by one. What do you know, that works...

As I was writing this, I realized that maybe some of the problems stem
from the fact that I started with a non-pristine .eclipse dir.

So I've erased it, and tried again:
  - add the WST project site
  - select the 4 components I am interested in
  - click install:
    http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/4483/screenshotinstall.png

What am I supposed to do next?

The whole thing is an interaction disaster. When I add a site it
should automatically read some metadata and add any dependencies
automatically, etc, etc. This is DLL/RPM/you-name-it hell all
over again.

-- 
Dimi Paun <dimi at lattica.com>
Lattica, Inc.




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