Pulse – Maintain Eclipse Profiles
Friday 14 December 2007 - Filed under Code
Just found Pulse. Made by the same people who created MyEclipse. Looks like a neat add on for Eclipse:
What is Pulse?
Pulse is a FREE product that gives Eclipse users the most effective and efficient way to locate, install and maintain multiple multiple Eclipse software profiles (configurations).
Their Road Map looks very interesting. I could see this being a welcome addition to a team – allowing you to easily manage everyone’s Eclipse configuration. It also looks like you could sync your work and home environments…
Update:
OK. If you use CFEclipse – please comment here, or on the forum post link above as to what you would like to see included in a “CFML Development” profile. The Pulse folks have emailed me looking for feedback. I’ve also posted a note to the CFEclipse mailing list as well.
Update:
So it appears you first must sign up – then download the Pulse ‘installer’. This appears to be an Eclipse application itself. Once downloaded – run it and you can pick and add Eclipse items to your ‘profile’. Currently CFEclipse isn’t listed. I’ve started a post on their forum to get it added.
So to test – I selected the “Classic” Eclipse, and added Subclipse and a few other things to my profile. Then you simply right click on the profile and hit ‘run’. It appears it downloads things in the background and eventually Eclipse starts up! Very nice. After digging around a bit it seems to store everything here (on Windows):
C:\Documents and Settings\priestj\.pulse
Next I’ll try to add CFEclipse and Aptana.
Hmmm. Seems that you simply add plugins that don’t appear in Pulse the old fashioned way. But I’m curious if you add them in this manner – if you share your profile if they will be picked up as well??
Can I use Pulse if what I need isn’t in the catalog?
Yes you can! While we continue to add to the catalog, we realize that you may want features that are not included yet. Go ahead and create a profile that’s close to what you want and launch it. Once running, you can add your custom features using the standard Eclipse update manager. Your local additions will be included whenever you run the configured profile.
2007-12-14 » Jim Priest
14 December 2007 @ 10:20 am
Update: I’ve started a forum post suggesting they add CFEclipse:
http://www.poweredbypulse.com/.....89#post189
14 December 2007 @ 11:30 am
Currently software you add-on locally is not available when you move to another system. While we definitely would like to get this going, there are a few technical hurdles we will be passing first before we can consider this capability.
Hopefully we’ll be sufficiently pro-active on the catalog and including quality software such as CFEclipse that we can help minimize the need for local configuration for the majority of users. Our goal is over the coming months to get to the 80% rule of most interesting software being available in the catalog.
Glad to see you discovered Pulse and see the potential like we do!
Cheers,
Tim Webb
(from the Pulse team)
14 December 2007 @ 11:38 am
Tim – thanks for the feedback!! I certainly see this as a great tool for teams, etc. Hurry up and add CFEclipse (and the others I mentioned if possible) and then I can start using it :)
14 December 2007 @ 9:40 pm
As a guy maintaining a Windows+Eclipse environment at work an a Mac+Eclipse environment at home…this could be HUGE. I’m on my way to check it out, but I love what I’m hearing…
18 December 2007 @ 10:52 am
Stay tuned! Some news on this coming soon!
19 December 2007 @ 4:02 pm
Okay, I don’t get it. Maybe it’s just late in the day (at least for me), but I don’t quite get it. It seems like a great idea (that’s missing a few key components for me), but I’m not clear on the implementation. What’s the primary benefit? The cross-environment synchronization? That’s the part that *really* appeals to me, but I don’t see any mention of Mac support. Am I missing that?
19 December 2007 @ 4:11 pm
Rob – I believe in the latest release they added Linux and Mac support. So now you can easily migrate or share profiles between platforms. I’ve been swamped but will try to test this at home tonight on my Ubuntu box.
19 December 2007 @ 4:40 pm
It is. No sooner had I written this then I gave their FAQ another read and it says so very clearly. It’s been a really, really long day. I guess my only remaining issue is that a lot of what I use isn’t there (most notably, Aptana & the Trac connector for Mylyn). That leaves me updating from two locations rather than just one (if I understand correctly) which is actually _more_ work rather than less. I think. Maybe.
19 December 2007 @ 4:48 pm
I agree that it’s usefulness is only as good as the software included. I still need to look at Mylyn. I thought that was in there? Long day here too :)
I’ve also emailed Adobe to see about getting the ColdFusion plugins included but unfortunately haven’t heard back from anyone. :( And I know the Pulse people are talking to the Aptana folks.
19 December 2007 @ 4:55 pm
Mylyn is in there, but the Trac connector isn’t included (as far as I can tell).
My other humble bitch is that you have to start with one of their baked-in profiles (again, as far as I can tell). Some of those have stuff I’d rather not clutter my system with. Be nice to be able to build an ala carte profile with _exactly_ what I want. Especially if Pulse, then, would take care of gathering all of the dependencies for me (almost like Yum for Eclipse)…
19 December 2007 @ 7:30 pm
I’ll ask about the Trac connector. You can build up your own profile – I started with Eclipse Classic – then added what I wanted. Remember this is still early – their RoadMap has some good stuff on it for next year:
http://www.poweredbypulse.com/roadmap.php
I also heard from the Aptana folks and got their go ahead to include it.
19 December 2007 @ 7:34 pm
Interesting…I didn’t see the “Eclipse Classic” profile. I’ll look a little harder. Thanks for the help.
20 December 2007 @ 9:11 am
@Rob – on my system if I look under Profile Catalog > Browse Categories > Java Development – I have Eclipse Europa Classic Edition listed.
20 December 2007 @ 9:25 am
Yep. I found that last night once you told me what to be looking for. I also saw that Mylyn’s Trac connector had been added (or maybe I just missed it before). Once they get Aptana in there, I’m ready to roll. :-)
20 December 2007 @ 11:29 am
Great! Aptana has said it’s OK so I’m sure it’ll be added soon. Now if I could just get someone from Adobe to contact me regarding the ColdFusion plugins…
20 December 2007 @ 12:10 pm
Wanted to update – I’ve heard from Jason Delmore at Adobe and they are interested in getting the ColdFusion plugins include – but need to review the legal and distribution issues… hopefully after the holidays we’ll get some more news on that!
29 December 2007 @ 12:30 pm
In case anyone finds this entry and is left wondering, CFEclipse has indeed since been added to Pulse, as Jim offered in an updated entry http://www.thecrumb.com/2007/1.....pse-added/.
15 January 2008 @ 12:39 pm
@Jim -
Have you successfully added Aptana to a profile managed by Pulse? I’ve been trying to make it work through the traditional Eclipse means (as it says you can in the Pulse FAQ), but the plugin shows up disabled (even though I can use it). The fact that Eclipse thinks it’s disabled prevents me from installing the PHP editor.
15 January 2008 @ 1:43 pm
@Rob – to be honest I haven’t tinkered with it much since the holidays. I do know the Pulse folks are trying to get the Aptana and Adobe folks to agree on including their plugins…
So you have a Pulse profile and then are installing Aptana via an update URL?
15 January 2008 @ 1:49 pm
@Rob – LOL – I was going to tell you to hit the Pulse forums but you are already there :)
15 January 2008 @ 1:53 pm
Yep. Been there. Thought I’d ping someone that I knew also used Aptana. :-)
15 January 2008 @ 1:55 pm
:) I just responded to your post there – to rehash – it sounds like the only way to currently install 3rd party plugins (not included in Pulse) is to use the old fashioned install method of downloading a ZIP file and uncompressing into the Eclipse directory. It sound’s like using “Find and install” from within Eclipse won’t work.
27 May 2008 @ 4:26 pm
I tried Pulse on 2 separate occassions and unfortunately was unhappy with it both times. While it is nice to download a single package for my needed environment, Pulse controls what additions can be made to CFEclipse and if Pulse does not have the additions, you have to find them manually and download the file and install it using that method.
Additionally, there were several core components that did not have the prerequisites installed but Pulse tried to install the updates anyway and continually failed in the update. There was no easy method to find out the prerequisites that were required and install them prior to having Pulse find the latest updates. I am right now uninstalling Pulse for the second time but the program has been uninstalling for the past 45 minutes. I get more control over CFEclipse by using the standard install and then installing CFEclipse into the existing Eclipse Classic.