Eclipse 3.4 and CDT 5.0.2 integration

IDE 4.6 was updated to include the integration with Eclipse 3.4 and CDT 5.0.2. For detailed information about the changes in Eclipse 3.4 and the CDT 5.0.2 project, see:

http://wiki.eclipse.org/CDT/User/NewIn50

The highlights of the new features to CDT are:

• Editor:
  • Code and File Templates — user-definable templates can be used in the New Class and New Source/Header File wizards
  • There's a new preference page for Code Templates (select Window > Preferences, and then expand C/C++ > Code Style, and select Code Templates)
  • There's now an Outline view for assembly files
  • A code formatter improvements including new whitespace and line wrapping options, Improved GNU coding style compliance
  • Various content assist improvements
  • Doxygen editor support — autogeneration of tags and a pluggable framework for other documentation tools is now available
  • Mark Occurrences — highlights where the selected identifier occurs elsewhere in the editor
  • Folding of compound statements
  • Macro Expansion hover and exploration tool
  • Spell checking available and enabled by default
  • Scalability mode for working with very large files
  • Visual Studio key bindings
• Navigation and Search
  • Open Declaration for operators, empty macros, element in the outline view, and so on
  • Open Element support for static functions and variables, as well as other improvements
  • Search — for Static functions and variables, macros, references of local variables, and Search view usability improvements
• Call Hierarchy
  • Read/write decorators indicate read/write status for variables
  • Polymorphic method calls (virtual methods) support
• Refactoring
  • Refactoring infrastructure has significantly improved (it now models transformation on the AST)
  • Generate Getters and Setters
  • Hide Method
  • Implement Method
  • Extract Constant
  • Extract Function
• Indexer
  • Improved accuracy and performance
  • Entirely new preprocessor
  • Improved infrastructure
  • Visual indication of indexer status
• Projects and Build
  • Project Properties improved usability
  • Make target locations — make targets at the project level are built in the project build directory
• Debug
  • Executables view
  • Event breakpoints — gdb catchpoints support was included

The highlights of the new features to Eclipse are:

• Platform Changes
  • New update UI — The UI for performing installation and updates is completely new in 3.4. You can access the new UI by selecting Help > Software Updates.
  • Unlike previous versions, you no longer have to find and select all prerequisites of the software you're trying to install. You can select only the single component of software you want, and all prerequisites are then automatically determined and installed for you. The Installed Software tab only shows the exact software items that you chose to install, rather than listing everything that's currently installed on your system. When you update software, all prerequisites of the software being updated are also updated, as required.
  • The new update dialog (Help > Software Updates > Available Software) also lets you add update sites using drag and drop. To make an update site available in Eclipse, you can drag and drop a site URL link from supported browsers into the page.
  • You can now view the software that's available for install or update in multiple ways. The Available Software tab (Help > Software Updates > Available Software) provides a View menu button that lets you view the software by site, category, or by name.
  • Checkbox options (Show only the latest versions of available software and Include items that have already been installed) at the bottom of the Available Software dialog let you further control what's displayed in the view.
  • A new Markers view (Window > Show View > Other > Markers) was added to incorporate your problems, bookmarks, and tasks into a single view.
  • The Problems view, Bookmarks view, and Tasks view now have a new look that include the following features:
    • Predefined filters for all errors and warnings on selection
    • Union or intersection of problems showing
    • A forms-based configuration dialog
    • Use of the commands defined in the workbench rather than custom actions, which results in consistency with key bindings and the main window menu
    • Working sets are now first class selection sources (i.e. if the Package Explorer view shows working sets and the Problems view is filtering on the selection, you'll only see the problems in that working set)
    • Show multiple content sets. The Problems view lets you see all markers, or just the problems.
  • The System Proxy Settings preference page (General > Network Connections) lets you specify the proxy settings to use when connecting to the network. The new System proxy configuration option lets you reuse OS proxy settings. Eclipse supports proxy manual settings and automatic configuration for Windows, and proxy environment variables and Gnome settings for Linux.
  • Eclipse for 64-bit Windows (Windows x86_64/AMD64 and IA64) are now included in Eclipse platforms and SWT downloads. To use them, you must run on a 64-bit edition of Windows with a 64-bit JRE.
    Note: The 32-bit versions of SWT and Eclipse can still be used on these configurations with a 32-bit JRE.
  • For source refactoring, the move, delete and rename resource actions now support refactoring; these new actions are available in the Project Explorer.
  • There is a new dropins folder at the root of the Eclipse platform install that can be used to drop in additional plugins, separate from the base application. This folder supports various layouts of plugins, features, and link files. On each startup, this directory is scanned, and any newly added content is automatically installed, and any removed content is uninstalled from the running application.
  • The Eclipse SDK now has a simple installer that you can use to install the SDK from www.eclipse.org or its mirrors. This feature provides a faster, authenticated download. The installer also supports a shared install so that multiple Eclipse applications on your system share the same data. The installer is available from the Equinox Download Page.
  • Now, when you install or upgrade using Help > Software Updates, the install process examines the signatures of the code being installed, and verifies that you trust the provider of the software. This verification occurs only once during the install process, after all the new software has been downloaded. The dialog lets you view the certificate trust chain, and examine the details of each certificate.
  • Previously, icons for files were chosen based on the file's name and extension only. Workbench views now show more specific file icons based on the file's content type. The IDE will initially display a generic icon, and then after determining content types in the background, icons will be replaced with more specific ones, if available. To turn off this behavior, select General > Appearance > Label Decorations preference page.
  • Eclipse 3.4 now allows multiple remote information centers to contribute content to the Help system. You can specify this feature by selecting Window > Preferences > Help > Content.
  • The column widths of certain tables and trees can now be changed in a keyboard-accessible way. This appears in the list of plugins or features available from the About dialog, and as a new view menu item in all views displaying markers (Problems, Tasks, Bookmarks, and Markers).
  • The Help view now has a Print button.
  • New projects can now be added to working sets during their creation. Currently all major wizards make use of this feature and there is API available for plugin developer.
  • You can now close view and editor tabs by clicking anywhere on the tab using the middle mouse button. If your mouse doesn't have a middle button, try clicking on the mouse wheel if it has one.
• Search Changes
  • The text search was improved such that regular expressions support for text search was extended. For example, select Search > Search, and in the Containing field, the new pattern \R will match any line delimiter (Windows \r\n, Linux \n). The \R can't be used in character groups ([]), since the Windows delimiter \r\n consists of two characters.
  • Several new constructs are available when replacing text in files, including:
    • \R inserts the document line delimiter (same as the Enter key)
    • \r and \n insert carriage return and newline characters, respectively. Mixing line delimiters inside a document isn't recommended and may lead to problems with external editors. Typically, \R is a better choice.
    • \t inserts a Tab
    • \xhh and \uhhhh to insert the specified character
  • In the Search view, the file search results now show line matches below files.
  • The text search replace dialog was improved such that replacing text matches (Replace All or Replace Selected in the context menu of the text search result view) now uses the same dialog as refactorings (it also includes preview and undo).
• Editor Changes
  • Direct interaction with text hovers doesn't require you to press F2 to see the full contents of a hover, and to scroll down. Now, you can just move your mouse over hovers that support this functionality and start scrolling. You can configure the behavior of hovers when the mouse is moved by selecting Window > Preferences, and then selecting General > Editors > Text Editors.
  • If a location resolves to multiple hyperlinks, text editors now present all available hyperlinks in a dropdown. You can change the behavior for hyperlinks by selecting Window > Preferences, and then selecting General > Editors > Text Editors > Hyperlinking.
  • The regular expressions support in the Find/Replace dialog (CTRL+F) was extended such that in the Find field, the new pattern \R matches any line delimiter (Windows \r\n, Linux \n). The \R can't be used in character groups []), since the Windows delimiter \r\n consists of two characters.
  • In the Replace With field, several new constructs have been added, for example:
    • \R inserts the document line delimiter (same as the Enter key)
    • \r and \n insert carriage return and newline characters, respectively. Mixing line delimiters inside a document isn't recommended and may lead to problems with external editors. Typically, \R is a better choice.
    • \t inserts a Tab
    • \xhh and \uhhhh to insert the specified character
  • There's a new regular expression that allows the case of each match to be retained when using Find/Replace. For example, replacing test with Foo in Test test= TEST results in Foo foo= FOO. You can use the same patterns when replacing from the Search view.
• Various printing improvements
  • The printing support for editors has the following improvements:
    • Line numbers are now printed if enabled in the editor
    • Background color is no longer printed
    • Annotations (e.g. error squiggles) are now printed
    • Each page shows the file name in the header
    • Each page shows the current page number in the footer
    • The print job gets a meaningful name
  • You can click on the ruler to go to the corresponding line, and you can hover anywhere on the ruler to see the line number at that ruler location.
  • The overview ruler now has its own context menu that lets you open the preferences. If the context menu is opened on an annotation, then it takes you directly to its annotation type on the Annotations preference page.
  • Text in the editor can now also be selected by using Shift+Click in the ruler's line number.
  • For the annotation text styles, you can now choose from all available styles for drawing an annotation inside the editor.
• Team/CVS Changes
  • Right-click on a project in the Project Explorer, and when you select Team > Share Project, the action now supports multi-select so multiple projects can be shared in a single operation.
  • The comment area of the CVS Commit Wizard now presents you with suggested corrections for misspelled words. The options are available using quick assist (CTRL+1) and are also shown in the context menu.
  • File changes can now be viewed in the CVS Commit Wizard. You can view the changes for a file by double-clicking on the file in the Changes pane.
  • Right-click on a project in the Project Explorer, and when you select Team > Ignored Resources, the preference page now lets you specify ignore path patterns, as well as file name patterns.
  • Improvements have been made to the Apply Patch wizard such that the handling of unmatched patch segments has been modified to be more consistent with how the standard patch application works. Segments that don't match at the location indicated in the patch are automatically tested at previous and later locations in the file to see if an exact match for the patch appears elsewhere. Also, if an exact match can't be found, the number of context lines to ignore when searching for a match can be automatically calculated and applied.
• Import Team Project Set improvements
  • Improvements have been made about how the import of CVS projects occurs when using a Team Project Set. Previously, a repository location was automatically created with the given connection method, and without a user name when CVS projects were imported from a project set. Now, the import process lets you fully configure the repository location, enabling you to specify a user name and change the connection method. For example, a project set file containing extssh connections could now be used you can reconfigure the repository location connection method on import to be pserver.
  • The CVS Apply Patch wizard now lets you see and inspect the sections that matched. Previously, only conflicting chunks were visible.
  • There's a new option in the CVS Share Project dialog that lets you choose to use the project name as the module name, and place it under the selected module.
  • The Apply Patch wizard counts lines added and removed in the patch. The default mechanism sums all lines starting with + and -. To define custom patterns that you can use to exclude empty lines or comments, select Window > Preferences, and then select General > Compare/Patch.
• Debug Changes
  • You can now import and export launch configurations in the local file system. Select Launch Configurations from the Run or Debug category of the Export wizard, and the next page in the wizard lets you select the configurations to export to a location in the local file system.
  • You can import launch configurations from a directory in the local file system.
• Default console and file encoding
  • The console encoding used when running or debugging a program automatically matches the encoding of the program being run or debugged. For example, your program's encoding will be used by the console and a corresponding VM argument will be added to the command line (for example, -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8). This makes it simpler to run and debug code displaying console output.
  • You can now drag text into the Expressions view to create expressions, and you can reorder entries in the Expressions view with drag-and-drop.
  • You can now remove items from the launch history menus. Use Control+Shift+Click to remove an item from a launch history (select the menu item while pressing CTRL+Shift). The launch will be removed from your history, but the configuration isn't deleted.