This is one of these days…
I crashed my eclipse installation. Somehow I managed to destroy my plugin directory while developing a plugin for the D programming language. At least my workspace was not torn into pieces.

So I’m installing eclipse once more. A routine I’ve already gone though several times.
And afterwards I’ll install my eagerly needed favorite plugins:

CAP – Code analysis plugin
http://cap.xore.de
If you’re in the situation that someone piles up branches of foreign Java code on your desktop and you have to get a quick overview where the turning points are and what classes you should avoid to alter, then have a look at this nice one.

djUnit
http://works.dgic.co.jp/djunit/index.html
This little helper shows you how good your code is covered by your jUnit tests. Plus, you get neat little “Boss-look-what-I-have-done” reports.

FindBugs
http://findbugs.sourceforge.net
You’re the secret code ninja of in your dev team? Even if you are, you’ll spawn bugs – anytime – everywhere… We all do. But FindBugs detects some of the common pitfalls we all take from time to time and saves us… time.

q4e
http://code.google.com/p/q4e
Googles Maven plugin. Period.

Metrics
http://metrics.sourceforge.net
The title says it all. Metrics calculates project metrics, like lines of code, cyclomatic complexity, nested block depth… whatever you want.

JBoss Tools
http://labs.jboss.com/tools
I’m a JBoss fanatic. So I won’t code any JavaEE for JBoss frameworks without this tool set.

Creole
http://www.thechiselgroup.org/creole
Another good tool to visualize large amount of code and it’s dependencies. Not everyones taste, but I like it. Maybe you like Jambalaya, too.

That should be enough for your next update session.

Added 20. Nov. 2007

Did I mention the myEclipse toolset?
It’s a commercial plugin, but with very fair pricing and it’s definitely worth every penny.