Pulse: Eclipse Made Easy
Been playing with the new Pulse profile manager for Eclipse and I'm loving it. This no-nonsense, customisable Eclipse distribution is way better than trying to work out which version of Eclipse platform you need and trying to install and debug your favourite plugin configuration. Another major bonus for development teams is the ability to share profiles so that you can easily get the whole company running a similar programming environment.
Genuitec (the makers of MyEclipse have released Pulse, a free online service for Eclipse users, that significantly streamlines the installation of Eclipse.
You can select predefined profiles to install. It's great to see a dedicated CFEclipse profile for ColdFusion development.
The resulting profile has only the plugins you select, giving it a kind of "lite" feel, dedicated to your chosen development environment.
Open up the Pulse perspective and you can browse the catalogue of plugins and other profiles.
Once you have found the plugin you are after, just right click and add to your profile. For example, Subclipse is a must for Daemonite development.
When you select the plugin you're asked to associate it with your installed profiles. This allows you to have streamlined profiles for different types of development rather than having everything installed at once.
There's a whole range of plugins available through the Pulse catalogue, complete with summaries and ratings. You can still manually install plugins that are not registered in the catalogue.
Your Pulse profile will show a custom icon in the dock on OSX. It's strange how good it feels to see a CFEclipse icon rather than the generic Eclipse icon.
Comments
Geoff Bowers on 06-Jan-08 05:18 PM
Update
I notice that Adobe may be considering the distribution of their ColdFusion plugins through Pulse!
rob on 06-Jan-08 07:44 PM
Ok, you got me it is cool
I hadn't had a chance to check out pulse, but you're right. It does look very slick.
Jens E. on 08-Jan-08 01:57 AM
Glad you like it
Geoff; I'm pleased you're finding Pulse to be a useful tool for you, your team and your community. Please drop me a line via email. I'd love to drop you guys a small token of our appreciation for taking the time to blog on your experiences. Also, any suggestions on modification, additions or thoughts on the CFEclipse profile in Pulse are welcome. We want to be sure we're addressing you adequately. All the best, Jens Pulse
Jim Priest on 16-Jan-08 05:44 AM
Nice write up!
Hopefully we can get Adobe to include the CF plugins!
Trond Ulseth on 28-Mar-08 08:24 PM
Sloooooow
I've been using Pulse for several weeks now, and I'n on the very edge of going back to the regular Eclipse. While Eclipse is pretty slow starting up in it self, with pulse it takes "forever". I've seen that Pulse 2 will have some speed improvements, and I'll give it a shot as soon as it's ready for mac. But it needs to be a lot better to keep me going with it. ps - I'm already doing what you proposed in another post to speed up Pulse