Here is the list of Top 5 Eclipse Annoyances we came up today at the coffee-table, possibly nice to share (in the order of importance).
Also serves as a good wish-list to my Santa Claus!
1. Update Manager
With the help of p2 provisioning and hard work this will be hopefully solved for 3.5. Please don’t mess it up this time! 
There was also some provisioning-related work done as part of 2007 Google Summer of Code.
When talking about “enemies” – Netbeans update manager is much more decent (yet less flexible)
2. Cannot have editors for “no-extension” files
no-Extension-Support bugzilla
Well, files without an extensions SHOULD be treated as any regular file – don’t make them feel like crap!
YET! At the same time we treat filenames without a filename properly – .project has the extension but no filename 
3. Opening files from command line
command-line file opening bugzilla
Getting closer I hope, there is a summer-of-code project related to command line commands (about triggering eclipse actions from web-sites). Plus a proof-of-concept thin text-editor padclipse.
Dear Eclipse, give command-line file-open and other configurable command line options. My neighbor Netbeans has it, I want it too.
4. Word Wrap
word wrap bugzilla
HAHAHA! You can take it from here, the official eclipse word wrap page. It works but has it’s drawbacks like bugs with ruler line numbers etc.
More seriously – it won’t be there in any near timeframe IMHO. Architecturally there has been a little flaw in the very core of Eclipse – SWT.
In SWT StyledText making up all these editors is missing a difference between physical and visual line numbers. Because of that a lot of plugins use one set of API methods for both visual and physical line numbers. To make sure transition is causing no harm, existing API should probably keep showing physical line numbers. But that would break quite a few things – rulers etc.
Not sure how many 3rd party plugins use line info and how to treat them nice while transitioning. Or if that ever happens.
5. Split Editor
Split Editor bugzilla link
What the heck is with this feature? People vote and ask for it.
Do you really need this? You can have many editors for the same file anyway just by choosing New Editor from the tab view popup.
What’s your greatest Eclipse New-Year-Wish?
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10 Comments
You left out more stable subversion support, as sometimes funny stuff starts to happen. I would create some bug reports, but I can’t even pinpoint where the problem lies or describe the anomalies.
I’m right there with you the Update Manager. As I’ve mentioned in other discussions, what’s needed is a higher level of abstraction. Users don’t want or need to know the low level details of available plugins (dependencies, build numbers, etc.), what they need is _only_ the useful name and description of plugins contributing “user level functionality”. GMF, EMF, Buckminster, whatever, have no meaning to the end user and so should not be available on the update manager.
It really a simple concept (which is why it’s so frustrating that the UM has stayed the way it is for so long):
If your 70% user can’t make a useful decision from some information, do not display it.
Ability to hide Wizards in New Wizard for the IDE interface. Everytime you install something, chances are you installed additional wizards. Put CDT/Python/RDT in and bang… its overcrowded there. Those “primaryWizard” are the pests of the bunch, short of editing the plugin.xml file itself, there is no way of removing them.
Wu MingShi: Good observation, it is a problem. Maybe “Recently used” category could help. Any idea if there is a bugzilla item for that?
A new issue just came to mind is this duplicated Quick search/filtering. For many dialogs (including new file wizards) when you start typing it either starts filtering out the list using unified global filter at “right-bottom” OR the custom dialog-specific filter. They definitely overlap in their original idea – filtering and search.
Window->Preferences is another good example of strange filtering technique – one search box at the top, another one at the bottom.
Gimme built-in column-based editor support! Like IntelliJ IDEA’s Alt+Shift+Insert!
Actually this second textbox is a search box and if I’m not mistaken, it is GTK only.
imeikas: aa yeah, right! true, sorry, this double-search-form really is gtk linux related
so not much to do I guess .p
Todd: yes, I totally agree with you. But there is one minor yet critical problem why KISS won’t work 100% here – Eclipse IDE is also used by hackers/hardcoders. So we really must serve all sides:
1. hackers/hardcoders who love every version and dependency bit
2. plugin-developers
3. end-users like regular java programmers
3. end-users like RCP-based application users
Anton: No idea how this column-based editor looks like but I’ll take a look. Unless you could send me a little screenshot
Ahti: To my mind, there are only two users: the aforementioned 70%, who want “end user functionality” (eg Column Based Editor, Web Tools, UML Editor, etc), and plug-in developers, who need componentry and detailed version info, etc. A single tool can’t serve them both.
The simple “user” tool should obvious to find and use–putting Software Updates under Help seems very out of place, given that without plug-in functionality, Eclipse is useless–like MonoDevelop, JEdit, Firefox, etc etc. The developer plugin installer should not be obvious, may as a checkbox that will cause the thing to disgorge the guts of every plug-in.
Just glancing around the provisioning site, I’m not very hopeful–the emphasis is framework and not UI. I suspect the Eclipse team will leave it to 3rd party developers to provide a useful plug-in management facility (since this is a point of feature differentiation, eg Yokos, RSA, that MyEclipse thing).
Anton: I know there’s a column-based editor out there, and I swear that in the 2.x gen of Eclipse it was part of the distribution. You may want to look at the Remote System Explorer… I think that added the column ruler at the top.
Of course, nobody really needs split pane support, but in a survey of one person, the editors that have that feature are way more popular than the editors that do not.