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Actually the MyEclipse team snuck that ability into the 6.0.1 release. You can now install Matisse4MyEclipse directly into Eclipse without MyEclipse by just pointing at the MyEclipse discovery site and selecting M4M and not ME. (You do need a Pro subscription though to use it).

Instructions here:
http://www.myeclipseide.com/documentation/quickstarts/m4minstall/#install_eclipse

When you look at some solutions like MyEclipse, which integrates dozens of open source solutions into a seamless IDE, you pay only $30 for the product and full support. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out. http://www.myeclipseide.com/

for most of the geeks :-) Before being bashed by FOSS gurus, let me show my example.

I'm a Java and Ruby (on rails) programmer. I've dropped windows about 2 years ago, and used various flavors of linux in this meantime (debian, ubuntu, gentoo and ubuntu again). Less than one year ago I bought my first mac (mac mini).

Java development in Windows is "standard", in linux is good and in Mac it is great. You have the same tools as Windows or Linux and, since java is "portable", all other tools (frameworks) works fine. The difference between Windows and Linux/Mac is that Windows restricts you *a lot*. Ex.: I put all my libs in just one place, and make sym links to them in the projects I need. In Windows, its not possible (afaik) (yes, a simple example, but try to keep the libs updated on a windows box...) . And the difference between Linux and Mac is performance. *Usually*, a Java application runs faster on Mac than on Linux, because the Java VM in Mac is done by Apple, meaning that its built by the ones who knows the OS. In Linux, as you certainly know, is a certain pain to install Java (you need to follow one or another howto to get things working), and the performance is *usually* worse than in a Mac, because the VM is done by Sun, which is concerned mainly in getting things working. Yes, they care about performance, but not that much :-) (just remember that IBM and BEA's VM's performs better than Sun's)

When programming with Ruby, Mac is really awesome. Again, Windows looses here. In Windows, you have a set of tools (editors/IDE's) that also exists in other platforms, but its performance is poor (afaik). Also, some Ruby libs requires some sort of compilation (mysql, rmagick, ...), and it can become a pain to get things working. On Linux, things are far better than Windows. You have almost the same tools, but its far easier to get things working: just apt-get / emerge / whatever and you are ready to go. In a Mac, just "port install" what you need, just like linux. The difference between Mac and Linux is in the tools. The same ones + a fantastic editor (and cheap for some, expensive for others). Ok, its not that smart to left an inexpensive OS to go to an "expensive" one just because of an editor. But trust me, it worth.

Besides these work-related details, you also get an OS that just works, with enough applications to do what you usually do on a PC, a good terminal (I definitely cannot use the "cmd" anymore), a more than nice UI and so on... And for people who asks me "why use a mac", I just ask the same: "why use a Windows". There is no reason to use Windows. I can't find something that Windows does better than Mac (ok, I left an space here for some +5 Funny comments).

But yes, there *are* reasons to use Linux instead of Mac. Specially if you want "all the freedom you can get", if you don't want to spend a penny in software or simply don't care about the UI.

Of course, I talked about just the OS itself. The hardware *is* more expensive, specially here in Brazil (macs comes from US, which means they are taxed in *only* 100%). But if you think a bit better, it probably worth. In my case, I spend more than 10 hours/day looking at a computer, so, it certainly worth for me :-)

And I'm sorry, this would be a single-line comment, but it simply grows :-(

Eclipse differs from NetBeans in one significant way, which is that Eclipse is not specifically a Java IDE. I'm doing development with J2EE right now, and am aware of two tools that make this pretty easy:
MyEclipse which costs money, and Eclipse's own WST. So yeah, trying to get plain old Eclipse and Java to work well with J2EE stuff is difficult, but the tools I just mentioned are very well supported.

I can just as easily start working in C++ with Eclipse, because it's not designed for any one language. That's very powerful.

NetBeans makes it easier to work with J2EE right out of the chute, but Eclipse is more flexible.
I've used both NetBeans and Eclipse, and most of my team uses Eclipse, I use it mostly, and a lot of that is because I like Eclipse's interface to VCS better than NB. I also don't like how NetBeans puts jars in my Tomcat directory, and alters its configuration. I don't know if it does that with other servlet containers, but it does with Tomcat.

Depends what you want

If you want:
The best code editor for any language at all ever then splash out any by IDEA. It rocks.

If you do any Java GUI development or want a quick free way to get going then Net Beans is for you. I generally recommend this to beginners because it is very easy to set-up and understand.
See: http://www.netbeans.org/

If you want a plug-in for every occasion, and don't mind having a long set-up time then Eclipse is for you. You can shortcut some of this by using something like My Eclipse.
http://www.myeclipseide.com/index.htm

Personally I use IDEA and Net Beans. Can't be bothered with Eclipse really.

The MyEclipseIDE ( http://www.myeclipseide.com/ ) people bundle it into their add-on pack as well. IIRC, it's a slightly tweaked version of the bugzilla integration plugin.

MyEclipse (an Eclipse plugin) already has Bugzilla integration, and only costs $30/year (whereas Deskzilla costs $99). I haven't used the Bugzilla integration much to say how good it is (J2EE app server support in MyEclipse is great, though). And I'm not really sure if they just repackaged this plugin that was already mentioned.

I always wait until Genuitec has released their version, with all its bells and whistles. Works on Win32, OSX and Linux with hundred+ plugins already configged and ready to go; those guys rock.

use MyEclipseIDE instead...
Excellent Struts support, as well as plenty of other J2EE features. Not free, but _very_ cheap considering it makes Eclipse a serious competitor to JBuilder Enterprise (or probably more accurately makes JBuilder not any threat to Eclipse).

At $30 a year it's an absolute steal. Eclipse has an incredible number of plugins available for it, but trying to keep all of the versioning conflicts straight between plug-ins will drive you crazy. MyEclipse handles all of these versioning conflicts for you and provides periodic drops with tons of new features.

I'm not trying to shill, I just really like it. If I spend 30 minutes a year screwing around with incompatible plugins it's already paid for itself. Besides, NetBeans just looks ugly :-)

Building value added plugins for a popular IDE (Eclipse) and people might pay more money

Isn't that the truth. IBM jumped into Eclipse with WSAD, then moved to the Eclipse 3 core with Rational Application Developer. I found myself in the unfortunate position of needing the current cut of RAD for the portal toolkit plugin for WPS 5.1 - only to find they want over 4k for the 'value add'. Lots of extras in there like the modeling tools, none of which I needed...

The EJB stuff is slowly working its way into Eclipse, which seems to me where most of these guys were trying to make their money. Even Netbeans had an 'enterprise' version for a couple grand if you wanted to do anything more than JavaBeans and JSP. It amazes me how long it took before things like My Eclipse plug-ins that give EJB tools for $30 a year - looking forward to more and more of these tools becoming commodity IDE items. Got to wonder how long IBM and others can keep charging stupid money for the plugins, however.

Then what about this?

http://www.myeclipseide.com/PNphpBB2+file-viewtopi c-t-6036.html

If you're doing any J2EE work, I highly recommend Eclipse with the myEclipse plugin. It carries a price tag of about $30 per year, but this is much cheaper than many of the other equivalent IDEs. Included are a JSP developer, XML editor, SQL Editor, database explorer, EJB modeler and JSTL support among many other features. It is a great tool.

If J2EE isn't of any concern, I still first recommend Eclipse because of its nice integration with CVS, JUnit and other Java tools. There are also plugins for C and C++. And best of all, it's free. Even if Eclipse weren't free, I'd still pay for it. It's the best IDE I know.

The only other IDE I'd recommend is SlickEdit. I used it for a number of years for C/C++ and Java before switching to Eclipse. It's a good editor, but I found that I could do my job better with Eclipse. Many of my co-workers use SlickEdit instead and rave about it. It all depends on what you need to do and how you work. There's now a plugin so you can use the SlickEdit code editor in Eclipse. However, Visual SlickEdit comes with a price tag in the $200 - $300 range and the plugin is a about $150 or so.

I think it would be interesting to look at the price
and sales of something like Eclipse vs. VisualStudio. Then if you throw MyEclipse into the mix and see how they do vs. Eclipse. MyEclipse costs about $30 and I have had no problems getting that approved from any company I've contracted for. They've even been so impressed they dropped their other IDEs and moved most of the developers over. Is $30 the right price for an IDE? Is free? Eclipse, as great as it is, can be a bit of a pain to integrate the various plugins you need to do real development. I have no problem paying $30 for that. I even bought my own copy to use at home because I like it so much.

On the flip side you have Visual Studio. That seems a bit much for an IDE. Luckily, the company I work for is also MSDN, so it isn't that much for me to get it. If I went into a company and told them I needed a copy of Visual Studio and it would cost them about $1500, I think some might not be too happy. Heck, I could probably get some places to drop MS for Java on server side development based on that cost differential alone.

It seems like the same thing is starting to happen on the Office front now--Star is cheap and Open is free and places are just starting to realize that maybe this is exactly how MS sets prices. It can't compete on cost so it ups the price to make people think it is better. Funny, but I think more and more CIO/CFOs are starting to see this.

MyEclipse plugin

I just read through their Subscription Terms

They are nuts!

A $30 fee every year or the software stops working!! Shades of IBM mainframe licencing.

Looks like a good product, but I will NOT get into that sort of payment schedule!!

What is Eclipse's philosophy?

Sorry, I should have been more expanatory, but I do have to get some work done during the day. :)

Eclipse is a bit different in its project-handling approach than many other IDEs like VS.Net, Borland Delphi, etc. All projects must be "imported" into the workspace before you can operate on them, and files within the project tree implicitly become part of the project. This is a relatively minor difference, but it can be strange at first when you're used to just opening a "project file" in other IDEs to begin working on them. The payback is that compilation is almost instantaneous and happens automatically when you save changes in the editor. I'm making a wild assumption that this feature is a benefit of having projects and their files imported or registered into the current workspace, since I haven't seen this feature in other IDEs.

Another big difference is that Eclipse, much like Mozilla, is a more of a reference design rather than a shrink-wrapped product, and as such is relatively sparse when you install it stock. You generally need to retrieve and install plugins to add functionality, but wow are there lots of good plugins out there. This is a Good Thing (tm) in my opinion, but it has caused no end of griping from our VS.Net developers who are using Eclipse. BTW, MyEclipse has pre-packaged plugins for Eclipse that are very affordable ($29/yr).

The philosophy of Eclipse, which is probably inherited from its IBM WebSphere roots, is that it seems to be designed for large or very large teams of developers in an enterprise situation, whereas most other PC IDEs seem to be geared more for smaller teams or lone wolf developers. That's not to say Eclipse isn't an excellent tool for small teams and individuals, any more than the other IDEs couldn't be used for computing in the large. I just get the sense when using Eclipse that there are large pools of power under the hood that I wouldn't be able to appreciate unless I had thirty other developers working on the workspace.

For J2EE, try Eclipse plus the "MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench" plugins. They do a pretty good job of integrating lots of other open-source J2EE plugins into something that's easy to maintain. And at $30/year it's hard to beat.

I've been using MyEclipseIDE for the last few weeks, and it's a great plugin. The best feature is the automagic JSP debugging with servers that support JSR-045 like Tomcat 5. I'm eagerly awaiting the new version that is supposed to ship tomorrow, because there are lots of new features like XDoclet support. I think they're adding some EJB tools too, but I'm just doing JSPs, Servlets, Struts, etc, so I haven't looked too closely. I had tried other J2EE plugins before: Lomboz, Sysdeo, etc, but this one is definitely easier to use. The others require you to play all sorts of tricks in order to do JSP debugging.

The MyEclipseIDE folks have an interesting business model. As I understand it, they're sort of "mining" the huge number of open-source plugins out there, taking the good bits, and integrating them into a suite with a clean UI. (And even writing tests and documentation. :-) I'm certainly willing to pay them $30/year for that. I just hope they manage to survive.

Laura

Definitely possible...

JBoss has JBossIDE, a set of plugins for running JBoss and related stuff in Eclipse.

MyEclipseIDE looks like it offers a plugin that supports several app servers, if you join for $30/year.

Plus, WSAD (WebSpere Studio Application Developer) is basically just Eclipse with plugins to run WebSphere.