Mylyn

I’ve started using Mylyn. It is a “task-focused interface for Eclipse that reduces information overload and makes multi-tasking easy”. Its objective is to improve productivity by reducing searching, scrolling, and navigation.

What does that mean? Basically, it allows you to access your bug tracker from inside Eclipse and then for each task/bug you are working on, it remembers what files you have been using most. The result is that when you switch back to a task you were working on before, the important and most relevant files you were using will be reopened and so at any given time, the files you need are close to hand.

The ‘tasks’, in my case, are defects/enhancements assigned to me in Trac (or specifically DevJaVu), but it has integration with Bugzilla, JIRA and others.

It’s not exactly ground breaking or revolutionary, but it is definitely useful (although the integration/synchronisation with Trac does seem to be a bit flaky, but maybe that is an issue with DevJaVu).
Next up, I would like to start making more use of the change set support.

Tags: eclipse, efficiency, mylyn, tools