CFEclipse (no need to fear)
A lot of people that I work with are stuck on Dreamweaver and Homesite for developing ColdFusion. I can understand that since I started out using Homesite. But, it always bugged me that they were not developing updates for it and I always like the biggest and the best.
I don’t like Dreamweaver because I feel like it is too bloated for coding. It’s a great tool for design but I tend to like my editors kept pretty simple when I am coding. That’s a topic for another post. Wait, Mark Kruger beat me to it (Read Here).
Anyway, the reason a lot of people don’t like CFEclipse (from what I have heard) is that you can’t just browse your directories and mapped drives. You have to create projects. Let me say this: Projects are better! But if you must browse files the OLD way, there is now a way to do it.
File Explorer View is a view available in the CFEclipse perspective which lists all of your mapped drives and allows you to browse them. Until recently, this was broken. No longer! See instructions below for installing CFEclipse version 1.3.1.6 or updating from 1.3.1.5 to get this working:
Installing CFEclipse 1.3.1.6 from scratch:
- Go to Help -> Software Updates -> Find and Install
Select “Search for new features to install” - Click “New Remote Site”
- Give it a name and the URL is http://www.cfeclipse.org/update
- Click OK
- Make sure the box next to your CFEclipse update site is checked
- Click Finish
It should find new updates. Expand out the tree to releases and you should see that you are going to install CFEclipse version 1.3.1.6. Go through the install and restart Eclipse when prompted. Go to Window -> Open Perspective -> Other and select “CFEclipse”.
Upgrading to CFEclipse 1.3.1.6 from 1.3.1.5:
- Navigate to your eclipse directory (wherever you unzipped eclipse to)
- Delete anything in the plugins directory that starts with “org.cfeclipse.cfml”
- Delete anything in the features directory that starts with “org.cfeclipse.cfml”
- Restart (or start) eclipse
- You will probably get errors about your workbench being reset. Ignore them. It’s because Eclipse can’t find the CFEclipse perspective
- Go to Help -> Software Updates -> Find and Install
Select “Search for new features to install” - Check the box next to your CFEclipse update site
- Click Finish
It should find new updates. Expand out the tree to releases and you should see that you are going to install CFEclipse version 1.3.1.6. Go through the install and restart Eclipse when prompted. When you re-open eclipse you’ll have to re-open your CFEclipse perspective. From there, just go about resetting your views how you want. Your File Explorer View will now work properly 
March 27th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Hey Rey, at the risk of becoming a lightning rod, I’ll add just one point of clarification: some have a beef not with being forced to use projects but rather being forced to open files from within the editor. They just prefer to open files from the file system directly, as in using Windows Explorer or My Computer on Windows (or when viewing the file system from within any other tool or its file>open dialog). This works fine if you’ve not yet opened Eclipse, but once opened, if you try it again it will launch an entirely new copy of Eclipse for that selected file. DW, HomeSite, and CF Studio (if configured to open CFM files) will, like most apps, just open them in a new window.
Many realize that this is a problem of Eclipse, not CFEclipse, and that there have been attempts over the years to resolve it.
And as you say, working in projects has its value–and some will puke on any with the temerity to complain of this issue of opening files from the file system (outside the editor). And yes, it may appear to some that opening files from the file system would indicate one’s not using source control, but that’s not necessarily the case. To those who’d want to argue against those with this beef, I’ll say “Dudes, chill”. Different strokes for different folks.
If it means some don’t use Eclipse for this reason, or don’t use it as their default editor, it will be their loss. If you really want to convert them, focus instead on helping them appreciate all the many other reasons to use Eclipse/CFEclipse which can’t be found in DW/HS/CFS.
I realize that was Rey’s goal here. Just saying that it addresses one problem (using the File Explorer within Eclipse), just sadly not this other one, which may be as big a problem for many holdouts.
(If I’m wrong, and this fix does indeed solve that too, I’ll be the first to shout Halleluiah from the rooftops!)
March 27th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Sorry, should have addressed this to Jake, not “Rey”. Caught that *just* after sending. Doh!