First off, let me say I’m sorry to hear about your medical ordeal! Life throws you some curve balls sometimes, huh? Anywho, I hope you’re feeling better and you’re getting your mojo back. Respect…

So, first off, your comments about Eclipse’s diff tool are spot on. Your comments about Subclipse are true too… IF and ONLY IF… you are using the latest version as of Feb. 2007.

Oh my how Subclipse has changed… First off there have been several minor revision updates to Subclipse since Feb. of 2007. The latest version for Eclipse 3.2+ as of the time of this writing is Subclipse v1.4.2 and let me tell you, it is a FAR cry from v1.0.5 (which is the version you had at best) mentioned in your post. In addition to overall stability and reliability, the new version has several new enhancements. The top three IMHO are as follows:

* JavaHL 1.5.1 binaries included for Windows

From the Subclipse website, ‘JavaHL is the name of the Java language binding provided by the Subversion project. JavaHL is an official part of the Subversion project, not the Subclipse project.’ I’m assuming (because I’m on a Mac) that these binaries are written and optimized specifically for Windows systems. This should mean that Windows users will have a major performance increase when accessing SVN repositories.

* Latest SVNKit Beta release included

The SVNKit Beta release is pretty stable. I’ve been using previous Beta versions, albeit on OS X, and the thing is sound as a pound. For the newly initiated, SVNKit is a Java package allowing Windows clients (which we all know don’t have a standard SSH implementation) to access SVN repos. via the svn+ssh protocol. This eliminates the need to install something like puTTY or similar to establish an SSH tunnel to the repository. This has been a HUGE deterrent in the past for Subclipse but I believe this is now a thing of the past.

* Subclipse’s diff tool

This thing is very nice indeed. It’s far and away superior to the diff tool of previous versions. In Eclipse 3.2+ when doing a compare with Subclipse, the diff tool will preserver color coding and formatting of your respective files. So, HTML, MXML, XML, JS or whatever will have the same look as it would if you were editing it (disclaimer: most of the hotkeys/shortcuts do not function in the diff tool. This is a minor gripe, but it would RULE if ctrl/command + D et al. worked in the diff tool)

For those of you who use SVN (and that should be ALL of you ;) ) the update site is here:

http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.4.x

I promise you won’t be disappointed.

TD

Currently, we’re still a small team of developers, using SVN, and I experience the same things you described about checking-in and out from the repo.

I guess that once you get used to thos kind of work-flow, life becomes easier, yet, I think what’s really needed is better refactoring tools to work on the local repository. Basically it shouldn’t work much different, it’s just that class rename for example, works only on linked resources inside your fb environment.

You mentioned file moving and package name changes, IMO it’s a refactoring feature whose absence is unbearable…