Eclipse webtools project (WTP) and its performance / quality

Question

Our company is using eclipse since several years now (we are using WTP since release 0.7)

I am currently evaluating eclipse 3.6.2 with WTP 3.2.3 which s

Answer 1

I also think the stability and performance of Eclipse/WTP is somewhat alarming. I'm using Eclipse since mid 2003 and have been trying WTP since its very first releases.

At first the quality was absolute abysmal, but for a 0.x version I couldn't complain of course. While waiting for WTP to mature, I used MyEclipse, which was sort of okay but had its flaws too (and being partially based on WTP, inherited some of WTP).

When MyEclipse became heavier and heavier, slower and slower and we ran into several stability issues, we switched to 'pure WTP'. All we were using was really the basic JSP/JSF editor and deployer.

Since WTP doesn't do incremental deployment (at least not for the JBoss server runtime) we added the separate server runtime from JBoss tools. When we adopted Facelets, we also switched to the editor from JBoss tools.

We do however run into a lot of problems we also had with MyEclipse. There are unexplainable slowdowns, but much worse are various stability problems. There are lots of awkward exceptions and crashes. A typical .log file on many different workstations I examined is chockfull of exceptions. A small selection of the last 10 exceptions in my log:

1.

java.lang.NullPointerException
        at org.eclipse.jst.jsp.core.internal.validation.JSPActionValidator.isElIgnored(JSPActionValidator.java:147)

2.

java.lang.RuntimeException
        at org.eclipse.jface.viewers.ColumnViewer.checkBusy(ColumnViewer.java:763)

3.

java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 38
        at org.eclipse.debug.internal.ui.viewers.model.FilterTransform$Node.addFilter(FilterTransform.java:67)

4.

org.eclipse.jdi.TimeoutException: Timeout occurred while waiting for packet 302111.
        at org.eclipse.jdi.internal.connect.PacketReceiveManager.getReply(PacketReceiveManager.java:171)

5.

java.lang.NullPointerException
        at org.eclipse.jst.jsf.facelet.core.internal.cm.ElementCMAdapter.getLength(ElementCMAdapter.java:109)

6.

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
        at org.eclipse.jst.jsf.facelet.core.internal.registry.taglib.WebappConfiguration.getConfigFilesFromContextParam(WebappConfiguration.java:184)

7.

org.eclipse.emf.ecore.resource.Resource$IOWrappedException: Feature 'span' not found. (file:///mysystem/Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS/com
/sun/faces/metadata/taglib/facelets_jsf_core.taglib.xml, 453, 52)
        at org.eclipse.emf.ecore.xmi.impl.XMLLoadImpl.handleErrors(XMLLoadImpl.java:83)
        ...
        at org.eclipse.jst.jsf.facelet.core.internal.registry.taglib.TagModelLoader.loadFromInputStream(TagModelLoader.java:100)

8.

java.lang.NullPointerException: No IModelProvider exists for project P/my_project of version: Utility Module
            at org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.model.ModelProviderManager.getModelProvider(ModelProviderManager.java:101

9.

 java.lang.NullPointerException
            at org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.internal.deployables.J2EEDeployableFactory.clearCache(J2EEDeployableFactory.java:238)

10.

org.eclipse.jst.jee.model.internal.mergers.ModelException: java.util.ConcurrentModificationException
        at org.eclipse.jst.jee.model.internal.mergers.EjbJarMerger.process(EjbJarMerger.java:79)

Note that these are just the last 10, there are many, many more exceptions.

The casual reaction would be: "Your Eclipse install is corrupted! You have a local problem!" Yes, I might have a local problem, but this "local problem" seems widespread as many Eclipse installs I inspected seem to have this stuff in their logs.

I'm also having problems with deployments like reported at the following link in various incarnations: http://community.jboss.org/thread/158611 It may be JBoss tools specific or it may be based on the underlying WTP or even Eclipse code. I don't know, but I do know it's a nasty problem. Every WTP and JBoss tools version there is 'something' fixed, and every version a problem like that resurfaces in a slightly different form.

Between the stability problems I'm able to get some work done and I love the auto completion and navigate-into features the editors offer me (which keeps me from switching to a text editor and building completely on the command line), but I sure would love some increased stability.