A wishlist of features - ABAP in Eclipse

[Florian]

Hi all,

today's blog is about features I love to see in eclipse. A lot of it is already built in (here I mentioned some How to get your colleagues into ABAP in Eclipse), but there are some I really miss or maybe I just wasn't able to "refactor" my thinking. What I hope, is to just talk about daily problems and get some other insights from you.

As you might know (or not:-)) the roundtable SAP Stammtisch Würzburg - Community Events - SCN Wiki had the first come together and this was a really hot topic.

1st The Scope-functionality

Good old fashioned SE80 I see it at the bottom of my window.

I use this function to make sure, that I'm not at a silly spot and also to search for the initial loop for example. Right now, I do not find an alternative in AIE so far.

2nd Search String in Program/Source

This hurt me from time to time. Also some of my colleagues are also complaining about it. At the moment I switch to the GUI to use it, because STRG-F just search my displayed include. An example would be that I search for a field, if it is already included in any select...

The where-used-function (STRG-SHIFT-G) is not able to this with a string, is it?

My solution to this problem would be a function that allows in eclipse to expand every include to a onepager...

What I mean is, that all includes are expanded in one big source

Example:

3rd Focus on a program/object

Maybe it is just me, but I really like the focusing on a program and navigating through the stack via the tree. I also like the Eclipse-tree, but it would be really nice to have a focused tree similar to the se80-tree because right now there are a lot of programs left, which are not class-based and the outline-view does not help that much.

I would also be happy, if this is an option would be available with forms in the outline-view.

4th Assist to create dictionary-objects

This is something I have a long time in my mind. With eclipse I'm able to declare variables local or even delete the unused variables in my program using the onboard-tools. I would love to see a function, that I'm able to refactor my local data-definitions to global dictionary-types. To be exact range-types. While using classes I need a lot of it and in my opinion a global type is better than a local type. That must not be true for everything, but having the option would be really nice

5th Defining a Standard-Header in the backend

Also something not really new, but would be a nice feature if it would be possible to define a mandatory-header for the different sources in the backend and every time one is created, the predefined header is included.

IMPLEMENTED (See SAP-OSS http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/2193295)

6th Multiple Logon pads

I think I'm not alone with my problem here... would really be nice to have this supported. Creating system direct in eclipse is good and works fine but in the end I also have a lot systems in my local logon-pad which I really use only once a year.

7th Extraction of ABAP Doc for Technical Documentation

Dreaming about a TD directly out of the source... this is a really far away idea. I think I could generate my TD with all the data I have available while developing and just press a button at the end. I'm sure it is possible but I have no clue how to do it.

8th Including the SFP-Transaction – Isn't it a Webdynpro Interface 🙂

I have a strong focus on developing forms and so I would love to see the implementation of Adobe as part of the eclipse. Not the tool itself, but the interface. So I'm able to just switch between two worlds and two different shortcut-features. Perhaps it is my personal problem, but I nearly always forget to activate my interface because of the other shortcut:-(

9th Enhancements

Last but not least, I would love to do my enhancements via eclipse without leaving the new world...:-) No need to add anything here...

That's it. This is my personal wish list with a few points I really like to see implemented. Feel free to add your personal wishes in the comments or give me a clue, if I can solve one of my points:-)

Cheers

Florian

PS bruno.esperanca , below you have as much space as you want to add your points discussed at our roundtable-meetup.