My Slow Switch to CFEclipse

This is the third time I’ve tried to switch to CFEclipse. It looks like this time it might stick.

My big problem with CFEclipse to date is that it has been incompatible with the way I have worked. I tend to work on many small projects, each with its own network share. In Dreamweaver each of my sites point to the UNC address of the project’s share. CFEclipse does not seem to handle files over UNC path’s directly. From the little bit of information I have been able to find, it looks like a problem with Eclipse, not CFEclipse specifically. It works just fine with mapped drives, but I have many projects, each with their own share, and that’s a lot of mapped drives.

Now, one of the guys I work with, newly minted MXNA blogger Dave Konopka, pointed out that I could just map the root of my web server. I have the ability to do so, because I have elevated privileges on my ColdFusion servers, seeing as how I built them. Now I’ve always viewed this as abusing my administrative rights since not all of our developers have these rights. I try to consume the services we provide as the rest of the developers here do, because 1, there’s usually a good reason for doing things the way we do, and 2. It helps me spot . However, come to think of it, the whole reason that I have a whole bunch of smaller projects is because I am an administrator. So maybe it’s not really cheating to do it this way.

Anyway, I’m over that hurtle, I’ve got a whole bunch of projects assigned, I’ve integrated Source Safe, and giving it an honest try.

What I like:

I like Snippets, especially after Mark’s tutorial. I like default code folding. I love Control+Shift+D (<cfdump> for those that haven’t used it). I love how much faster it is than Dreamweaver, especially working remotely. I love that the component explorer allows me to drop a fully written <cfinvoke> set down. (Well technically so does Dreamweaver, but CFEclipse does it much faster.)

What Surprised Me:

I’ve gone ANT crazy. It’s not really within the scope of CFEclipse, but now that I get ANT, I love it. It’s so much easier to run build tasks now.

What I don’t like:

I still wish the aforementioned difficulties with UNC paths weren’t there. Other than a few “I’m used to doing a different way” problems that are just learning curve issue, I only have one other concrete issue. I wish I could color the background of comments to the bright yellow I’ve gotten used to in Dreamweaver. (I know, it’s coming. )

I think between the speed, the integration with ANT, and the general direction of the community, I might stick with CFEclipse this time around.