Thanks to a tweet by
enno.wulff with an animation of the
Mini-Me and the blogs about the ADT in Eclipse by
jelena.perfiljeva2 and
florian.henninger I was reminded of a nice little feature of Eclipse. At this point thanks to the mentioned persons for the inspiration.
But first of all, the central question is whether more community members like small things like
tiny houses,
minions, or model trains? If so, how about a small copy of an ABAP source code? Then quickly activate the
Minimap in Eclipse (check screenshots by following the link). It's a general function of Eclipse that allows a scaled down representation of the entire code open in the currently displayed tab.
What can you use that for? For a first impression, an overview and a faster navigation
🙂
So far, this feature has helped me in very specific cases. I'm talking about the "mega-reports" and the "giants-includes". By mega-reports I mean reports that really contain everything. Not to make it easier to copy between SAP ERP systems, but because apparently no one came up with the idea to create additional Includes for certain report components.
With giants-includes I mean customer extensions such as the MV45AF*-includes. Some of these includes are very complex for historical reasons. The "Isle of Happiness" was perhaps not discovered in the past and there was more "happiness" if it worked at all
😉 By the way, global memory at runtime in such includes often looks like a messy garden that could need a good gardener.
In order to fully use the advantages of the small representation of the Minimap, I recommend activating the Dark Theme (Standard in Eclipse) or
Darkest Dark Theme. With an appropriate coloring of the source code, extensive comments and interesting structures can be quickly identified.
It is, however, to be considered that the Minimap is just one tool of many to have some orientation in a large maze. For classes that are developed according to modern development criteria such as the "
Separation of Concerns" principle, I don't use the minimap. In such classes, I really try to accommodate only the absolutely necessary source code. Better a few more classes, but small classes. Therefore, the overview is a bit simpler.
Thank you for reading, enjoy trying it out and having a good time (yes, it's friday)
Michael
