Best Practices for Eclipse's Problems View

Question

I am using Eclipse for quite some time and I still haven't found how to configure the Problems View to display only the Errors and Warnings of interest. Is there an easy way to filter out warnings from a specific resource or from a specific path? For example, when I generate javadoc I get tons of irrelevant html warnings. Also, is there a way to change the maximum number of appearing warnings/errors?

I am aware of the filters concept, but I am looking for some real life examples. What kind of filters or practices do other people use?

Edit: I found the advice to filter on "On selected element and its children" to be the best one. I have one other issue however. If I have "a lot" of warnings or errors, only the first 100 appear. In the rare case I want to see all of them, how do I do it?

Answer 1

In the top right hand coprner of the problems pane is a filter button (it looks like three arrows pointing to the right), clicking that will let you configure the view. You can filter by element, such as the class you're editing or working set, the type of problem (e.g. java problems, buildfile problems etc..) and by severity. It's actually very configurable.

See http://help.eclipse.org/help32/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.platform.doc.user/concepts/cprbview.htm for details and screenshots.

Answer 2

If feel that filtering "On selected element and its children" is the best mode of Problems view filter, because it allows you to very quickly narrow down the scope of reported problems: click on Working Set (in Package Explorer), and it shows all problems in all projects in the set; click on a project - and only problems in the selected project appear. Click on individual class (or package) - only problems in the selected class (or package) are shown. So you don't get distracted with problems unrelated to your task at hand.

Answer 3

An updated link for Ganymede (Eclipse 3.4):

http://help.eclipse.org/ganymede/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.user/concepts/cprbview.htm

But I agree with the fundamental problem: the Problems view needs filtering by Resource, not just Description.

In my case, I include generated jsp code in my source path, and there are all kinds of warning that occur in the *_jsp.java files (like unused application, page, out, config, page_context variables). So it would be nice to exclude them by the Resource pattern. (Or for jspc to not write unused code...but that's a different issue altogether).

Answer 4

Re: your edit

In the drop down button by the filter button, there is a preferences option. Uncheck "Use Marker Limits" and you will be shown all errors + warnings.

Answer 5

To view more than 100 warnings, go to the problem view's drop down menu (use the little arrow next to the minimize button on the view), select Preferences, and you will have the option to change this limit from 100 to another number.

This information is for Ganymede; things have changed since Europa and I'm not sure of all the differences.