Atlassian Connector for Eclipse – a review

In two words: pretty neat.

Once I managed to get the thing installed, using it was pretty easy. All I could take advantage of was the FishEye and JIRA integration (we don’t use Bamboo or Crucible at Wotif), but these were a good sample.

The JIRA integration is a more-polished version of the standalone JIRA Mylyn plugin. It builds on the awesomeness that is Mylyn and couples it with the awesomeness that is JIRA. As a team lead, being able to see the issues get raised and progressed, as well as using it to track my own work is very nice. If we leveraged JIRA better in our daily/weekly workflow, it would help even more I think.

The FishEye support is wonderful. You get a few new entries under the “Team” context menu, which allow you to either view the current file/folder/project directly in FishEye – right on the correct branch and (for files) revision, in the embedded browser. Or you can copy the URL to view in an external browser. A “launch in system browser” feature might be nice, though. Still, the amount of time I’ve spent in the past trying to navigate through FishEye to get a change history in a friendly form makes this support excellent – a real time saver. I’ll probably never use the built-in team history support again (well, maybe the compare…)

Configuring the FishEye support isn’t that intuitive, and the documentation isn’t clear – it’s described well in the release notes, but not in the users guide. You set up FishEye servers as Mylyn task repositories – this is best done from the “Task Repositories” view. Once you have your server (or servers) set up, you can map your SCM paths to repositories in FishEye – either from the Preferences menu (which is a little painful to do), or simply by trying to access the FishEye view, because it prompts you for the details (auto-filling the SCM path, which was the annoying bit for the Preferences menu). This is a one-off per SCM repository – so it’s not too burdensome.

The Bamboo support and Crucible support seem to be the killer features of the connector, however – it’s a shame I can’t get any use out of them.

In short, if you use any Atlassian products, and you use Eclipse, get the Atlassian Connector. You can also try the IntelliJ version – if your particular perversions run that way, of course.

Author: Robert Watkins

My name is Robert Watkins. I am a software developer and have been for over 20 years now. I currently work for people, but my opinions here are in no way endorsed by them (which is cool; their opinions aren’t endorsed by me either). My main professional interests are in Java development, using Agile methods, with a historical focus on building web based applications. I’m also a Mac-fan and love my iPhone, which I’m currently learning how to code for. I live and work in Brisbane, Australia, but I grew up in the Northern Territory, and still find Brisbane too cold (after 22 years here). I’m married, with two children and one cat. My politics are socialist in tendency, my religious affiliation is atheist (aka “none of the above”), my attitude is condescending and my moral standing is lying down. View all posts by Robert Watkins