There's an interesting post on stackoverflow concerning the quality of the Eclipse WTP which seems to be decreasing with every major release:

Our company is using eclipse since several years now (we are using WTP since release 0.7)

I am currently evaluating eclipse 3.6.2 with WTP 3.2.3 (...)

(...)
WTP 3.2.3 seems to be much slower than 3.0.4.
In fact I am really wondering why WTP gets slower with each release.

(...)

We only need basic WTP functionality for developing jsps, xmls and xsd. We don't need high sophistic features like Dali (should JPA tools really covered by a webtools project?), Libra or a visual xml editor in the first place.

(...)

The worst thing is that I've got the feeling that the WTP dev team does not care much about performance (e.g. have a look at the http://wiki.eclipse.org/WTP_Performance_Tests page - last update took place in 2008).

(...)

But obviously the project has a problem with its quality assurance, especially in terms of performance which affects usability and user acceptance.

(...)

[The] team should focus on the things which are essential to most of the users in the first place and afterwards work on implementing super-duper-features.

Does this sound familar to you? I had a déjà-vu while reading this post.

You can find the whole stackoverflow post here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5433991/eclipse-webtools-project-wtp-and-its-performance-quality

I found the above article too negative, it is easy to shoot. I have been using WTP now for 4 years and I am quite happy with it. I think indeed that DALI should not be part of it but the XML editor should.

It's true and not just about wtp. Modelling, to some extent gef, are all close to be unusable. Looks like the eclipse project soon reach it's climax and become totally unmaintainable.

I would say, Yes. WTP makes my eclipse really slow, There's complain for making the build process slow too.

servletworld

... when you think of the huge complexity comprised of plug-ins, facets, editors, tools, ... it manages and combines decently. In some aspects Eclipse probably reached its limits. But only because framework and 'platform' providers shamelessly add complexity all the time.

I think migration to E4 will be a big deal with all old plugins...

Considering plugin API changes, it would obliged some big projet like wtp to refactor important parts and interaction with the whole platform !

I hope it will also revised performance issue and stability issues...

Geek help... Anyone know how to minify a jQuery file? I can never figure out jsmin.exe

husky tool boxes