M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
>> Total size of downloads: 165,416 kB

So, having done the empirical measurement of starting the bittorrent 
download of the Win32 version (I'm sticking to my gaming partition while 
on vacation), I got download speeds of 300-400 kB/s over a 4 Mbit 
connection. The Linux x86-64 swarm needs some loving, but local Ubuntu 
repositories still reach around 220 kB/s download speeds without a 
problem. 10-20 minutes download time, not stellar, but fits into a lunch 
break.

I've pulled single MP3 files that size through the connection. That's 
roughly two hours at 192 kbps - a not uncommon size for a DJ gig ripped 
off webradio. And those sure as hell crop up more often than new Eclipse 
versions.

It falls into the tolerance limit for me. YMMV. What's important -for 
me- is that Eclipse does deliver in features (and then some), and does 
so without getting in the way for most of my usage scenarios - the only 
necessary evil in the way to editing code I feel is setting up a new 
project to tell Eclipse where in the filesystem to look when using Open 
Resource. I honestly could care less about download size if it's 
downloadable in reasonable down-time, and about performance if it runs 
fast enough on hardware I work on.

I can also very well understand the decision to make RDT and RADRails 
Eclipse plugins. Java development bloatware or not, it probably has an 
amazing amount of resources for tool development included, and you don't 
have to reinvent the wheel with project management, version control 
integration, code template support, and the list could go on and on. You 
can concentrate on just making it support Ruby, and I could invoke the 
DRY principle here, which probably holds more value than 
not-quite-tangible lightweight / heavyweight "language attitude" 
arguments when deciding how to implement a fairly complex tool. (SWT 
also looks better than FOX if you're being aesthetic.)

A fourth of the download size was Seamonkey. Which sounds a lot like a 
packaging problem, or something on the Mozilla side of things. I can't 
believe you need all that to be able to embed Gecko into SWT.

PS: If trying out, go for Eclipse 3.1. 3.0 was rather slow, and 3.2 is 
still early adoption and needs to have some kinks worked out.

David Vallner