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Bug 537867

Summary: Export preferences gives paranoiac warning
Product: [Eclipse Project] Platform Reporter: Paul Benedict <pbenedict>
Component: UIAssignee: Lucas Bullen <lbullen>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact:
Severity: minor    
Priority: P3 CC: daniel_megert, Lars.Vogel
Version: 4.8   
Target Milestone: 4.10 M3   
Hardware: PC   
OS: Windows 7   
See Also: https://git.eclipse.org/r/127360
https://git.eclipse.org/c/platform/eclipse.platform.ui.git/commit/?id=2fa0110c3313b9308a5ce537a126da8b5e1d54b9
Whiteboard:
Bug Depends on: 500051    
Bug Blocks:    

Description Paul Benedict CLA 2018-08-10 16:21:17 EDT 
At the bottom of the Preferences dialog, Eclipse Photon displays a new "Export" button. Woot! I freshly installed Eclipse and tried to export for its own sake. To my surprise, I immediately was given a warning dialog about possible unapplied changes!

So I took a pause.... Did I really change something? No, I didn't. Though being the programmer I am, I thought to myself that, perhaps, Eclipse made some preference changes for me automatically in my favor. Okay, so I cancelled out. Clicked "Apply and Close" on the Preferences dialog and repeated these steps. Again, the warning dialog appeared.

This really is an over-the-top warning message with no remedy. Is there absolutely no way to determine if *anything* has been changed before warning the user?
Comment 1 Dani Megert CLA 2018-08-11 05:21:12 EDT 
(In reply to Paul Benedict from comment #0)
> This really is an over-the-top warning message with no remedy. 

You can choose to apply (to be sure everything is exported).


> Is there
> absolutely no way to determine if *anything* has been changed before warning
> the user?

Currently no. We usually don't keep track of unsaved preference changes. That's why we also don't flag a page that has changes. Having said that, of course it could be implemented somehow.
Comment 2 Paul Benedict CLA 2018-08-13 10:17:11 EDT 
Dani, thank you for your response. If the perfect solution is not possible, can you please consider a stop-gap measure? I suggest a note should be placed somewhere -- to explain why this message is being shown (as evidenced by myself I was thinking something definitely was changed) -- either in the dialog itself or as an F1/Help answer. If not even that, that maybe the message itself needs rewording? In an y case, I'm hoping this small enhancement may save you some Bugzilla churn from other users.
Comment 3 Dani Megert CLA 2018-08-13 10:27:23 EDT 
Lucas, can you have a look?
Comment 4 Lucas Bullen CLA 2018-08-13 10:41:27 EDT 
Would this be a better wording?:

We are unable to test if you have made any changes across all preference pages.
If you have made unsaved changes and wish to have them included in this export, press 'Apply and Continue'.

If you have not made any changes or wish to not include any of your unsaved changes, press 'Continue'
Comment 5 Eclipse Genie CLA 2018-08-13 16:05:45 EDT 
New Gerrit change created: https://git.eclipse.org/r/127360