Very unreliable on Debian Linux!

Very unreliable on Debian Linux!

Hi all,
I’ve been looking for a supported version of Eclipse – which is my primary development environment – and, in particular, a java IDE with a reliable GUI designer. I use Eclipse for all my server side work, but find that WindowBuilder is very flakey – often hangs and the code easily gets unglued from the screen design to the point where WindowBuilder is simply unable to make sense of it.

I’ve been using NetBeans for GUI Application development and the Matisse screen designer is wonderful – very solid and functional – but the rest of NetBeans is not really up to production standard for serious server-side work – hence, I have been using two IDEs which is pretty cumbersome. I took a look at MyEclipse and saw that it does support Matisse, so I decided to give it a try.

Installation on my Debian 10 laptop went well enough and the result looks good. I got it connected up to CloudForge and AWS, and managed to download my server-side projects and build them – all worked fine. Then I tried to build a simple application with a GUI and it all fell apart. Matisse simply does not work – I create an Application window in Matisse and it creates the form file, but does not create the corresponding java file – then you are dead in the water! I repeated this several times – never works for me. Reluctantly, I decided to try WindowBuilder – perhaps that is more reliable than the version that ships in standard Eclipse? No, it’s not – cascades of errors in the error log and I can’t get as far as I usually do in free Eclipse!

I’ve uninstalled it and reinstalled it – tried building a GUI before I added any non-standard components like the AWS and Drools toolkits – still no luck. Currently it’s completely uninstalled – I don’t have the time to try any more experiements. Am I unique in this? Is anyone else successfully using MyEclipse to build GUI applications (preferrably with Matisse) on a Debian platform? MyEclipse looks good and certainly has some of the rough edges of free Eclipse knocked off, but at the moment it is pointless for me – I would be paying money just for a slightly prettier version of the freebie…..

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With WindowBuilder on the scene, it’s been a long time since we updated our Matisse integration. In fact, we even removed it from MyEclipse as we were no longer maintaining it, but added it back as an optional component because many users were still finding it useful.

As far as WindowBuilder is concerned, you should have had the same experience that you do in Eclipse – we do not make any modifications to the WindowBuilder tooling as most of our users are satisfied with the stock experience. If you could share your error log from [workspace_location]/.metadata/.log, we will be able to look how you had a worse experience than you do in stock Eclipse.

Coming to your final question about whether MyEclipse is worth it – if you are looking just for a GUI tool, like Matisse or WindowBuilder, I would say no, it isn’t. If you are looking for a better overall dev experience in Eclipse, with performance and usability fixes, with support for Spring, Maven, and a vast range of frameworks (including support for modern frameworks like Angular and Vue) as well, MyEclipse should be your tool of choice.

I hope this helps, we’ll be happy to answer any further questions you may have.