For those of us creating IDE and IDE-like projects using Eclipse, EclipseCon 2007 isn't as heavy as 2005 and 2006. But there is still a bit to chew on.

0. The best IDE help I found at previous EclipseCons was the informal discussions at lunch and the late night BOFs. There's no IDE BoF yet, but the Eclipse Monkey BoF is an interesting topic for those of us interested in languages: "Monkeying Around: Eclipse Monkey Re-Born".

1. If you will be creating a debugger, "(3701) A Tour of the Eclipse Debug Framework [Part 1 & 2]" is not to be missed. I've taken variations on this tutorial and it's fantastic. The Eclipse debug plug-ins are, in my opinion, some of the best designed parts of Eclipse.

2. Learning how the JDT achieves its functionality is always helpful. "(3693) JDT fundamentals - Become a JDT tool smith"

3. "Dynamic Languages Toolkit". I know nothing of the dynamic languages toolkit, but can't wait to find out more.

4. "What Does Eclipse Need To Do To Become the IDE for Ajax?".

5. "What sucks about Eclipse". Who can resist a session with this title? As much as there is to love about Eclipse, we all have our handful of things we hate.

6. "SAFARI: A Meta-Tooling Platform for Creating Language-Specific IDE's". SAFARI was announced last year and came too late for our IDE. And I'll attend anything presented by Chris Laffra. (In fact his "Eclipse FAQ" book outlines the proper steps to follow to create an IDE.) That reminds me to attend Chris' Equinox presentation, "Getting Hooked on the Equinox Framework".

7. How will you unit test your IDE. "Making Unit Testing Part of Your Development Process: How to Get Your Team to Do It" and "UI Testing in the Real World: Myths and Realities". And don't forget the BoF: "Automated Java GUI Testing BoF".

8. Nightly builds and tests are a big consideration. The Eclipse framework is powerful, but confusing. This session may help. "Putting your Build to the Test: Automated JUnit and Performance Testing the Eclipse Way"

9. Want refactoring in your IDE? Check out "Unleash the Power of Refactorings in your Products - Experiences from 5 years refactoring support in JDT"

10. Need to co-exist with other languages? "Supporting Multiple Programming Languages in Eclipse"

11. "Contributing to Menus with the new API". At EclipseCon 2006, I attended a session about the new menu contribution API. The information that it wasn't quite ready for prime time in Eclipse 3.2 was worth the cost of the conference. Here's hoping the story will probably be different for 3.3.

12. I'm interested to see the Wolfram Workbench Demo ("Wolfram Workbench Demo").

Has developed a commercial Eclipse-based IDE.