Upholding a cherished holiday tradition, a new Eclipse milestone has arrived for Christmastime. Here are some of the more noteworthy things available in milestone build M4 (December 14, 2007) which is now available for
. See the
for details about bugs fixed and other changes.
Platform
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| Accessibility for Mac OS X | Eclipse is now accessible on Mac OS X Carbon. The Mac screen reader, VoiceOver, can be turned on and off with Command+F5. The snapshot below shows the VoiceOver cursor highlighting a tool item in Eclipse. 
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| URL transfer support | There is new Drag and Drop API to support the conversion between text in URL format and a platform-specific representation of the data. 
For further details, see snippet 284. |
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| Create a region from a path | There is new API to flatten a graphics path into line segments. Line segments can be used to create a region, which is used for non-rectangular shells. This snippet creates a circular shell from a path. 
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| OpenGL support on Solaris | OpenGL support has been added on the Solaris-GTK and Solaris-Motif platforms. 
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| Proxy settings on Mozilla-based Browsers | Mozilla-based Browsers now support access to the web through a proxy. This can be set by specifying the network.proxy_host and network.proxy_port java properties at startup. For more info see How do I set a proxy for the Browser to use?
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| New look for Problems, Bookmarks and Tasks views | The Problems, Bookmarks and Tasks views are now based on a new provisional API viewer (the ExtendedMarkersView) that has a new look, implements many long-standing feature requests, and is reusable by RCP applications wishing to use their own custom marker view. 
User-visible feature highlights include:
- 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. This means consistency with key bindings and the main window menu.
- Working sets as first class selection sources. For instance, if the Package Explorer view is showing working sets and the Problems view is filtering on selection, you will only see the problems in that working set.
- Show multiple content sets. The Problems view allows you to see all markers, or just the problems.
Some of the RCP features are:
- API markers view.
- Ability to set visible columns based on content.
- Menus built entirely by commands for easier extensibility.
- Reuse of system commands.
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| Christmas wrapping...for your trim!! | The trim is becoming a more versatile area; used now for minimized trim and extendable through the org.eclipse.ui.menus extension point. In order to handle the growing number of trim elements, we've decided to grow the trim as well. It'll now wrap if there isn't enough space to display all the elements in one row (or column). 
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| Close tabs with middle click | 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 of those.
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| Line support in overview ruler | Until now, the overview ruler was only helpful when it showed annotations. Henceforth, 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: 
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| Configure annotation preferences via overview ruler | The overview ruler now has its own context menu that allows you to 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: 
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| New annotation text styles | You can now choose from all available styles for drawing an annotation inside the editor: 
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| Improved key binding support for content assist and quick fix | When a completion proposal pop-up is shown and the focus is still in the editor, Home, End, PageUp and PageDown now navigate inside the completion proposal pop-up (like Up and Down always did). In addition, support for Emacs key bindings has been added: Ctrl+P and Ctrl+N now navigate up and down the list while the editor is active. However, the Eclipse key bindings are not active once the completion proposal pop-up gains focus: in that state it will behave like every other table on your OS.
Hint: On Linux, you can enable Emacs key bindings in all UI elements by adding the following line to your $HOME/.gtkrc-2.0 file:
gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs"
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JDT
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| Runnable JAR export wizard | The new Runnable JAR File Export wizard can create a JAR file based on a given launch configuration. The generated JAR contains all class files from the project including class files from required JARs and projects. The generated JAR can be executed with the command:
java -jar generated_file.jar
or, on most operating systems, by double-clicking the file.
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| New Java search options | Type reference search can now be limited to specific match locations in the code. For example, you can find only all references in cast expressions, or in field and local variable types. The following example shows how to search for all catch clauses in your code (search for references to '*' and limit to catch clauses):
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| Improved search when no source is attached | Java Search is now able to find references to annotations inside class files even if no source is attached. For example, given the following simple setup (JAR file on the classpath with no source attached):
Searching for references to Demo annotation will now give the following matches in the Search View:
As no source is available, the Class File Editor will be opened while showing each match of the JAR file. For example, the match corresponding to the Demo annotation reference on the X class declaration will look as follow:
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| Read and write occurrences | Mark Occurrences (Alt+Shift+O) in the Java editor now marks read and write accesses with different colors.
 You enable Mark Occurrences in the tool bar. Annotation colors are configured on the General > Editors > Text Editors > Annotations preference page
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| Occurrences In File improvements | Several improvements have been added to the Search > Occurrences In File command: - The quick menu (Ctrl+Shift+U) now only shows the searches applicable for the current selection. If only one search kind is possible, the shortcut will directly invoke the search.
- The menu now offers all searches available by 'mark occurrences' in the editor.
- The Occurrence result search view offers a Link With Editor mode where the view input is connected to the current editor selection.
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| Improved unnecessary SuppressWarnings diagnosis | The compiler diagnosis for unused @SuppressWarnings (introduced in 3.4M3) no longer complains if the suppressed compiler diagnosis is set to 'Ignore'. |
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| Diagnosis of redundant superinterfaces | Redundant superinterfaces can now be detected by the compiler. The following example shows a redundant superinterface declaration. The unnecessary code can be removed by using quick fix (Ctrl+1).
You can activate this compiler diagnosis on the Java > Compiler > Errors/Warnings preference page in the Unnecessary code section:
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| 'Convert to StringBuffer' quick assist | The new 'Convert to StringBuffer' quick assist (Ctrl+1) transforms string concatenations into more efficient, albeit less compact, code using an explicit StringBuffer:  
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| Change method signature participants | A new extension point 'org.eclipse.jdt.core.manipulation.changeMethodSignatureParticipants' allows code to listen to and participate in 'Change Method Signature' refactorings. |
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| Javadoc view shows constant values | The Javadoc view's description now shows the constant value for static fields that are computed at compile-time: 
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PDE
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| Open plug-in artifact | Find extension references, extension point declarations, and plug-ins all in one place. Simply type Ctrl+Shift+A, enter the plug-in id, and let PDE do the work. The dialog includes filters for extensions and extension points to help you quickly and easily find what you are looking for. 
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| Editor icon overlay enhancements | PDE has added icon overlays to easily identify: - Optionally required bundles and imported packages
- Exported packages specifying x-friends
- Exported packages declared to be x-internal
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| Grouping in Log view | The Log View now supports grouping log entries by session or by the plug-in which logged the entry. When the view is grouped by session, the most recent session is denoted in bold to allow for easy identification. 
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| Manifest hyperlinking in PDE Spy | To save time, PDE Spy includes hyperlinks directly to a contributing plug-in's MANIFEST.MF. By clicking the link, PDE will open the Plug-in Manifest editor on that plug-in. 
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| Greater simplification and customizability in headless builds | Setting up a headless build has been simplified. A build can be set up with only the single build.properties configuration file. The allElements.xml file is not needed unless the added customization it provides is desired. PDE Build now also allows custom steps during the assembly and packaging phase of a headless build. A template customAssembly.xml script is provided with the available targets.
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| Individual Source Bundles in Eclipse SDK | PDE now supports individual source bundles. The Eclipse SDK is now shipping new source bundles instead of the old source plugins. This makes shipping source simpler and more flexible. See the wiki page for details on converting your build to use the new source format.
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Equinox
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| New extension registry listener | A new way to listen to the extension registry events has been added. Keeping up with the dynamic nature of the registry has never been this easy! For details, see org.eclipse.core.runtime.IRegistryEventListener. |
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| New provisioning support | The Equinox Incubator p2 team has released their fourth milestone. - Automatic updates will pre-download the artifacts before prompting for availability.
- An initial version of the UI for reverting to a previous install is now available.
- Support for automatically discovering on startup bundles that have been added to a managed folder.
- Presentation of software licenses on installation.
- The content of metadata repositories can now be categorized.
- The reliability of file transfer has been improved.
- The memory consumption has been reduced.
Though this support is still in incubation, we encourage you to take a look at it. See the Equinox Provisioning wiki page for further information.
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The above features are just the ones that are new since the previous milestone build. Summaries for earlier 3.4 milestone builds:
