First of all, this is not a setup/deployment issue, it really should have been posted to the Liferay IDE forum.
Ken Turner:
(1) It seems that portlets can't be packaged and deployed using Eclipse. "Run on Server" does not seem to work reliably, and it has other oddities such as creating multiple browser instances when this is done. Instead, it seems that the Ant build file needs to be used (which is a shame). Is it planned to allow direct deployment, re-deployment and undeployment of portlets while using Eclipse?
Using the ant build file simulates the same sort of deployment that you would be using to promote to a test or production environment. I personally wouldn't want to develop any other way because I want to ensure when it comes time to do that deployment, I know I'm ready.
(2) Eclipse displays only the structure of files like "portlet.xml" and "liferay-portlet.xml" rather than the content of these. The values also cannot be changed except by editing the XML. Is it planned to make these display and edit properly using the "structure" editor?
What? In my visual editor from the IDE I certainly can use a structured editor. You may be looking at them using the XML editor. If so, just use the 'open with' to find the right visual editor on the file.
(3) "New/Liferay Project" creates "XXX-portlet" as the name of a project with a portlet. It would be less confusing if this were simply named "XXX" since it seems that this can have one or more portlets inside it. "New/Liferay Portlet" seems to be for creating a further portlet within an existing project, rather than for creating a new portlet. Superficially its name suggests it should create a new and independent portlet.
The default expectation is that plugins are deployed separately from each other. You may choose to change the project name if you wish, but you really should think twice before bundling multiple plugins together. For real development organizations, all changes must be tested - if you put all of your portlets in one project and a change was only needed for one of those portlets, proper testing etiquette mandates testing of all of the portlets. There's also possible collisions when multiple developers are working on the same project to contend with.
