For my diploma thesis, I’ll be extending a tomcat-based wiki.

So I decided to setup a development framework for Tomcat, JSF and all these. What a mess. The installation docs are really really bad etc.

Two hours later, a dozen Eclipse restarts, I might finally have the Eclipse.org Web Tools Platform on my computer. I don’t know yet, since I didn’t even write a single line of code or metadata yet. I think I’ve picked my preferred mirror about 20 times by now.

I wish I could just use apt-get. Debian is so nice for installing software… I wish eclipse were a pure opensource project, and there weren’t so many companies trying to sell extensions to it. Oh, and I wish it were a native Linux/Unix project, and wouldn’t care about working around Windows userunfriendliness by offering an own installer and own update tool and own everything-that-windows-lacks.

[Update: how to install eclipse extensions without going crazy:

mkdir -p ~/.eclipse/eclipse/plugins
mkdir -p ~/.eclipse/eclipse/features
touch ~/.eclipse/eclipse/.eclipseextension

Now start eclipse, go to Help, Software Updates, Manage Configuration and add ~/.eclipse/eclipse as a location to search at. Note that the folder must be called eclipse and have these two folders and marker file in it.]