Description of elements (methods, parameters, types,...)

[michaelvk]

Hello,

I would like to open this discussion as a feature request to SAP.

It´s about the possibility to create/determine descriptions for all kind of development elements.

For in example, in SE24 for every element there is the column "description". (Attributes, Methods, method parameters, Class Types,..).

For dictionary objects (for example the dictionary type of an attribute or a method parameter) the description is automatically determined from dictionary, and you can also overwrite it manually.

For other elements like methods, you can of course also create your own descriptions.

It would be very helpful to have the same possibilities in general also in Eclipse.

Because now, if I for example create a new method, I don´t do it in Eclipse because then the descriptions are missing. So, I have to jump to SE80, create the method there, descriptions are determined or manually set, and then jump back to Eclipse.

That´s just one example, and it would much more convenient to do everything consistently in Eclipse without jumping to other tools.

I hope this can be considered to be added as a new feature.

Thanks!

Regards,

Michael

[ThFiedler]

Hi Michael,

in Eclipse we provide a more powerful concept to document your objects. It is called ABAP Doc similar to Java Doc. See the blog from Michael Schneider where you find the details:

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-40872

Kind Regards,

Thomas.

[former_member366527]

Hello Thomas,

what about selection-screen parameters:

REPORT zapbc400tss_compute.

PARAMETERS:
   pa_int1  TYPE i,  " Number
   pa_op(1) TYPE c,  " Operator
   pa_int2  TYPE i.  " Number

How can I achieve in Eclipse that text/name of parameter f.e. in this case Number is displayed?

I have search in all documentation, withouth success.

In SE80: GoTo->Text Element->Selection Texts

Bye,

Peter

[ThFiedler]

Hi Peter,

actually this is not possible in eclipse. You have to use the SAP GUI transaction to maintain the text elements and selection texts . There is a shortcut available in Eclipse editor:

Short Outlook: We are already working on text elements support in eclipse. Will be available with one of the next versions.

Kind Regards,

Thomas.

[former_member366527]

Hello Thomas,

thank you for your fast response. OK, this is positive news. I visited on April 30, 2014 the CodeJam in Muenster. Now we write the evaluation report, about the future possibility of using eclipse for ABAP developing, in our company. We count on this, that using of eclipse for ABAP will be always better and better.

Bye,

Peter

[ThFiedler]

Hi Peter,

we are developing ABAP in Eclipse in a very agile development model. We ship the tools in a very incremental way. That means every quarter you will get a new version with new features and new bugfixes. Sometimes the features need ABAP backend parts so that these features are not usable for you until you upgrade your ABAP server release.   

Customer feedback is very important in such a development model so that we can prioritize our backlog for the next development cycle.

Kind Regards,

Thomas.

[former_member366527]

Hello Thomas,

our evaluation report seems to be very positive, but still we have listed some disadvantages, but with notice, that SAP AG is updating frequently (every quarter) its ADT.

Disadvantages I have found at first here in SCN   Now I follow up this site to find up if everything is so as written in feedback from Olga. In this way I have found also selection-screen parameters. Of course some informations are pretty old.

Have you some tips/instructions where are listed the newest advantages/disadvantages. It would be great if you could provide them!

I could now use text elements in eclipse. Thank you for your help.

Hope to hear soon from you,

Bye

Peter

[joao_sousa2]

Short Outlook: We are already working on text elements support in eclipse. Will be available with one of the next versions.

Great stuff. In the beginning ADT was a bit limited, but now I think I has come to a point where it is more powerful then SE80, especially for people who are used to another languages like Java and C#, and program mainly in OO.

ABAP docs is great for example, I just need the @TODO tag. Pretty pleaseeee!

[ThFiedler]

Hi Peter,

you can also check our FAQs document for help:

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-29113

Drawbacks from my perspective are:

- Modificactions and Enhancements cannot be edited with eclipse editor

- Minimum ABAP Release is 7.31 SP04

Regards,

Thomas.

[former_member366527]

Hi Thomas,

I will check your information tomorrow, as I am whole day in the training.

Thank you.

Bye,

Peter

[former_member366527]

Hello Thomas,

thank you for your help.

Bye,

Peter

[daniel_ruiz2]

Agreed.. //TODO is a must, ADT team please implement such as it should be very straight forward!!

[ThFiedler]

Hi Daniel,

why don't you use the Task Markers from Eclipse to mark Todo in your code:

For me this works perfectly fine.

Regards,

Thomas.

[joao_sousa2]

Because we are used to TODO in other languages

[Former Member]

Hi Thomas,

Do you know of a way to look at Exception class Exception ID Texts in Eclipse?  Is this even possible or does one need to go to SAP GUI to see these texts?

Cheers,

-Andy

[daniel_ruiz2]

Hi Thomas,

it works 'just fine' because you 'probably' came from ABAP.. and in that case, Eclipse no matter what will 'work fine' because the bar is set too low.

as Joao Sousa mentioned, we're used with the // TODO as a Task (Compiler) - the main reason for such is, it's a lot faster to deal with them this way -- creating a Marker as you mentioned could also work but it defeats the purpose a little bit.. in fact, I've never saw in my life (15 years, and I use Eclipse since before it was part of the Eclipse Project) people using the TODO the way you mentioned, and I reckon it's due the additional few seconds it takes to create a Task Marker and perhaps the 'non-standard' nature implied by it - as a Task Marker has no 'real standard', we could use the same ones as we do for Tasks but then again, it's still not a 'standard'.

bottom line is, SAP is already copying a lot of good stuff from other languages (we know which one), so just add a bit more stuff in the copy list and we will be fine.. it's just funny, ABAPDoc has been 'implemented', but the main reason to have it (to spit out documentation) is not there.

D.

[joao_sousa2]

Just to add something, the TODO is inserted in the source code, so it is available independently of the editor. It has been used for so long and it is so simple, why make up an alternative for ABAP?

As for ABAPDoc, I'm sure HTML ABAPDoc generation is in the works.

[ThFiedler]

Hi Andy,

unfortunately this is not supported in Eclipse up to now.

We actually implemented the support for text elements so that you can display the text with is defined with a text element in the editor using F2 (Elementinfo). I see the same solution for Exception IDs. I will put this in our backlog.

Also the creation of new exceptions ID is not possible. Maybe a Quick Assist would help to create new Exception IDs.

Thanks for the feedback,

Kind Regards,

Thomas.

[ThFiedler]

Hi Daniel, Joao,

both things are in our backlog:

1.) We already started the ABAP Doc generation to offline HTML documents. This is very high ranked in our backlog.

2.) TODO Markers: Would be fine to hear more from you about your concrete expectations.

Kind Regards,

Thomas. 

[joao_sousa2]

Regarding the todo markers i think we just want it to work like in Java. More consistency with other languages is good.

[ceedee666]

Hi all,

I totally support Former Member and Former Member views. The possibilities to add a ToDo marker in ABAP source code directly, in a similar way to how it's done in Java, would be really great.

Support for exception ID texts is another functionality I'm really missing. So it's good to hear that it is going to be put in the backlog as well.

Christian

[Former Member]

Hi Thomas,

Thank you for your quick response on this and keep up the great work!

Cheers,

-Andy

[daniel_ruiz2]

Hi Thomas,

Good to hear that, regarding the Markers - as Joao mentioned, having it working like Java would be great.

Other stuff I mentioned in the past is the ability to have a 'generate getters and setters' -- I'd even point out this is priority number one for me, since creating the beans is a rather time consuming and tedious task.

Regards,

Daniel

[ThFiedler]

Hi Daniel,

Quick Assist for Getter/Setter generation is also high ranked in our backlog.

Concering the TODO markers I have a question. In Eclipse for Java you have the possibility to display the TODO markers in the Tasklist of Eclipse. When we want to display the ABAP TODO Markers also in the Tasklist the question comes up which markers from which objects you want to see?

• All markers of the system
• All markers for all objects where I'm resonsible for?
• All markers of my favorite packages of the ABAP project?

What do you prefer? Or dou you see additional choices?

Regards,

Thomas.

[joao_sousa2]

Hello,

I would say the ones I'm responsible for, like the RSS feed. System wide and favorite package you lose focus, todo should be your work.

Thanks

[ThFiedler]

Hi,

don't you want to see TODOs in objects where you are not responsible for?

In our dev teams normally the developer who changes an object is not respinsible for the object.

We don't have strict code ownership. Is this different in your case?

Regards,

Thomas.

[ceedee666]

Hi Thomas,

for me the two most important selection criteria for the display of todo markers would be:

• all markers from my favorite packages
• all markers from all objects in transport request I'm involved in.

The relational behind the second is that when several people work on a larger development, which is collected in a transport request, everyone should be able to see all todos.

All todos in the whole code base is not so important for me. In the worst case this would probably lead to some kind of don't care attitude if there are to many todos. Furthermore, it is highly likely that once some code is already in production no one will dare to change it unless there is a bug or feature request requiring the change.

One thing that just crossed my mind was the integration of the todo markers in the ATC. If putting todo markers in the code will be encouraged by using AiE there should also be an option for people responsible for the QA of code to see those in the ATC reports. Some check like this could be easily build into the ATC.

Christian

[joao_sousa2]

for me the two most important selection criteria for the display of todo markers would be:

all markers from my favorite packages
all markers from all objects in transport request I'm involved in.

I can agree with this.

I mentioned the RSS feeds in the previous post, and the most useful feature of the RSS feature would be dump scanning.... in production. I usually have AiE connected to Dev, put the most important dumps, the ones I need to know at once, are the ones happening in production for my object.

If we could attach a corresponding PROD system to a ABAP Project, it would be awesome.

[ceedee666]

Hi all,

I think there are some pretty good discussions regarding features for ABAP in Eclipse. In order to structure the discussion a little bit I created a Wiki page

ABAP in Eclipse - Community Feature Requests - Wiki Stage - SCN Wiki

Maybe we can use this wiki page for future discussions related to new features for ABAP in Eclipse.

Christian

[daniel_ruiz2]

Hi Thomas,

third option basically.. it should show up basically on code downloaded to Eclipse which is opened (Project) - I wouldn't be too concerned about transports.

@Joao: I believe you can actually attach a Productive System to any ABAP Project in Eclipse based on the connection you decide to use when you create the Project... it should be pushing objects from that system, thou I'm not too sure how that becomes a positive point.. most systems (Productive) are closed for modification unless it arise from a Transport.. might be just easier to work directly in Development as we are supposed to do.

@Christian: not too sure the about your view on people responsible for QA of 'code'.. Are they developers? - Case yes, they use the same tools or methods a Developer use, case not, this is not their business.. my $0.02 on the topic.

D.

[joao_sousa2]

I don't want to change objects in production. I just want to attach a production system to the development project so that the rss feed from my objects comes also from production.

The RSS Dump feed for development system is not very useful since most of the time I'm the one generating the dumps, but RSS for production would warn me about critical problems in production generated by users.