Eclipse/4.1 Known Issues

Current State

Rough edges

Anyone using the Eclipse SDK 4.1 extensively for development will notice some rough edges in this release. Although the release is completely functional for self-hosted development, and the development team has been using it on a daily basis for a year, there are some notable problems you should be aware of.

Known issues that prevent startup

• Due to the new flexibility that the workbench model provides, it is possible to create new shapes in the Eclipse user interface that were not previously possible. This includes detached editors, putting editors in the same stack as a view, or having multiple part stacks within a detached window. Since the layout can be a lot more complicated now, at times it is possible to get the model into a state where the renderers are unable to render the user interface. This can prevent startup from completing, or cause the user interface to start in a non-functioning state. In this situation, restarting with the -clearPersistedState command line argument will cause the user interface state to be discarded. The user interface will then start normally but will revert to the default perspective and layout.
• Eclipse SDK 4.1 fails to start when proxy passwords have been saved in the global secure storage area by a previous version of Eclipse. The workaround is to clear or move the secure storage area prior to first launch of Eclipse SDK 4.1. See bug 320932 for further details on the bug and workaround.

Memory leaks

There are some known memory leaks in this release. Running the SDK for long periods will generally cause memory usage to continue increasing. Periodic restarts may be required to recover memory when the SDK is used extensively. For details, see bug 336862.

Changing themes do not update all widgets dynamically

When changing to a different them on the 'General > Appearance' preference page, some changes to the appearance only take effect after a restart. See bug 321050 for details.

Missing API/Developer functionality

As a plug-in developer, you will notice immediately some missing developer-level functionality. (Of course these omissions imply corresponding missing user functionality, but we focus on the developer view of them).

• All API is provisional. Since the purpose of the 4.0 release is to get a wider community adopting the technology, we are leaving ourselves an additional release to get the API right, based on developer feedback.

4.1 GA Release

End user features to be addressed

• Drag-and-drop of tool bars are not currently supported
• Views cannot be maximized. See bug 332498 for more details.

Post-4.1

End user features to be addressed

In some cases, end-user features that exist in 3.7 have been removed or otherwise limited in scope to allow us time to reevaluate how they should be presented in light of new e4 technology.

• Intro. The Intro (Welcome view) is not shown on the start of a fresh workspace. We will need to address the intro management differently in 4.x than in 3.x. Since this release is targeted at current Eclipse developers, the expectation is that not having this functionality will not be a major issue.
• There is no updated user documentation. While most user documentation from previous releases is still valid, screenshots have not been globally updated to reflect the new look and feel of the 4.1 release.
• Customize perspective. Given the increased flexibility allowed by a modeled UI, we have not put effort in the 4.x release into modeling the same perspective functionality as in Eclipse 3.x. There is no UI for the end-user customizing perspectives. Future releases will bring perspectives up to par, and likely surpass the capabilities and increase the flexibility of the 3.x perspective model. bug 320478

Missing API/Developer functionality to be added

• There is no updated plug-in developer documentation.
• Bidi support.
• Capabilities are not supported. bug 319865. UI will appear whether the capability is enabled or not.
• Accessibility testing has not been done.
• Extension point incompatibilities. Some aspects of the Eclipse 3.x UI extension points are not yet supported by the SDK compatibility layer. In particular, the org.eclipse.ui.actionSets extension point, while functional, may not have its items ordered in the same way that they show up in for Eclipse 3.x.
  • Toolbar button ordering can be different than in 3.x for some action set contributions. bug 319704.
  • No e4 equivalent for popup menu contributions.

Intentional Changes from 3.x

End user features

• Users will no longer be able to make a view a fast view