As expected by many, Eclipse PDT's next major release has been postponed.
While two milestones couldn't be released, it became clearer and clearer that the release date of September 15th 2008 couldn't be met.
On December 29th 2008 Eclipse PDT 2.0 will hit the street
There is one milestone and two release candidates planed, before the final version is being expected to be released on December 29th 2008.
Personally I don't mind the delay, as PDT 2.0 will include many improvements to the current version:
- PHP Model Infrastructure
- Mark Occurrences
- Type Hierarchy View
- Override Method Annotation
- New PHP Explorer capabilities
- Extended Open Type
- Code Templates
- Code Assist for Dynamic Variables
One of the other reasons I see for delaying PDT 2.0 (hey - they bumbed the planned 1.1 release to 2.0) is a huge internal API change, also introduced because of the switch to Eclipse DLTK (Dynamic Languages Toolkit - a tool for vendors, researchers, and end-users who rely on dynamic languages).
Well, at least chances might be good they will include (at least a basic) Phar support.
We really need a good IDE, and PDT is the best one I have seen. I'm very anxious to use the new version
Meanwhile, will they offer a stable Ganymede compatible build (1.0.4)?
Will they finally jump on the release train next year?
In Ganymede the WTP and XML support made great strides, but no.. PDT won't play along :(
I don't think there will be a Ganymede compatible build of the current 1.x line of PDT, as there were internal API changes.
Releasing 1.x for Ganymede would also mean supporting two different version of a product - which I think would reduce the development speed of PDT 2.0 even more.
Let them take there time - I'd better like to have a stable and feature rich version of PDT 2.0 than an unstable new version.
That's just it: it would buy them their time.
From what I understand 2.0 extensively uses an API new in Ganymede. But it looks to me like the other way around they'd have little more to do then to update the dependency list. I'd be surprised if doing a 1.0.4 would be more than 80 hours of work.
Now I have to work with two versions of Eclipse side by side: the new one for my Java work and the old for PHP. For all the "general web stuff" I feel the pain of missing the new features.
Currently we IMHO have an Eclipse based IDE that doesn't work on Eclipse. So, I take it you mean it would be supporting one version, instead of zero, as it stands right now. Really, that release train is there for a reason. Howcome the PDT folks think they're smarter than that?