Evil build.properties file

Somebody out there help me please.  I just can't get the build.properties to work with  Force.com Migration Tool.  If I just edit the sample file with my credentials, it either gives "username cannot be an empty string", or the "locked out" error.  Somehow the referenced properties just don't work for build.xml.  Don't know why.

I could get the properties to work if I include them in build.xml:

<property name="sfpassword" value="XXXXXXXXX"/>

They can be referenced just fine.  So somewhere I'm not using the file= attribute right for the property tag.  Not an expert of Ant in the end.

I guess it's just fine with me.  Putting those properties outside of build.xml could be a dangerous proposition.  Making them reusable in build.xml is all I need.

The fate of force.com IDE - what SFDC should do and will do

Was watching this preview video about Summer '13 and heard Ryan Upton (@ryanjupton) and Samantha Ready (@samantha_ready) answering the question about updates to the Force.com IDE. Their (unofficial) opinion is that given the advent of a mature Developer Console, Force.com IDE should be considered being deprecated.


I cannot be sure how reliable or serious the comment is right now, but suspect that if that becomes the official line, it'll be a problem for a lot of the users (and thus for Salesforce itself). To be able to retire an existing tool means its functionality can be better replaced by a new tool, or the functionality is simply no longer needed. I don't think anyone can claim the latter yet, so let's examine whether Developer Console can fulfill the former:

• Is there a good option for hooking up to source management?
• Is there a good option for managing deployment process?
• Is there a good option to quickly switch org/environment?

Once you contemplate the answers for these questions, it's not hard to draw a conclusion.  And I'm sure there's other questions too.  

The Tooling API would be a good start for an era of some great alternatives to Force.com IDE.  But we're there yet.  Things like Sublime Text2/MavensMate alone won't get us there.

Contrary to the size and adoption might have indicated, SFDC sometimes still doesn't think as an enterprise platform should.  I hope the discussion on the Force.com IDE was among moments like that.

"com.salesforce.ide.api.metadata.types.Metadata$JaxbAccessorF_fullName cannot be cast to com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.reflect.Accessor"

Saw that on my newly installed Juno when I tried to refresh Force.com projects (or pretty much everything else after that).  There's some discussion with no definitive answer (various workarounds work for various users).  For me it's fixed by using JVM 1.6 instead of 1.7 (update 21).

Pause in Selenese

Had to rewrite my script to download export files from scratch as I didn't have my original script as a reference.  I was then baffled by the Pause command not working - the script doesn't pause at all.  Thought it's something with Selenium 2 (was using 1), but then did a quick search and noticed this comment by @Khairul. Without practicing often, you just forgot things I guess!