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First Thoughts on the Eclipse IDE?
OpenSourcerer asks: "Has anyone used the opensource IDE Eclipse. Initial impression is that of a slightly slow but very modular and configurable IDE. Anyone else has any experience using this?" I must say that the idea is novel enough, instead of building an environment around a specific language/compiler, you build a framework and have plugins support the specific features that you want. Java development tools have already been released and it looks like the C/C++ project is just getting under way. For those of you who have given the Eclipse project a quick look, what do you think?
Nice idea, having modular plugins, but how will the plugins affect each other? There's potential for a lot of useful applications, but I wouldn't put anything 'mission critical' into it.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
What's so novel about this? emacs has been like this for years!
Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes
..accomplishes much of what Elipse is trying to do. I have even used VS to step through Lex.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Netbeans.
www.netbeans.org
Languages are pluggable and use the same forms designer and property editor. Haven't used it much though, I'll have to see how overall usability of the IDE is in the long term.
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It runs on linux, but looks like ass, and is slow. It runs and looks *great* on win2k, though.
Until the very latest devel builds, it was a Motif app (*gag*). They've just started work on a GTK+ version, but it's broooooken. In lots of ways.
I intend to start working/playing with it, but I'm not a C guy, I'm a Java guy, and can't contribute much to the core of the editor, I'm afraid.
Conceptually, it's brilliant, and the greatest thing since sliced kielbasa.
cheers,
Chris
http://resumes.dice.com/objectnetworks
I think the eclipse IDE is nice(cant decide between it and forte, both have the same disadvantage of being alittle slow) but i cant wait for the C/C++ ide, i also hope Borland releases a form of "Kylix" for C/C++. Does anyone know anthing about that.
Codewarrior (which has been available for Linux for years, as well as for Mac OS and Windows) uses this exact same approach, plugins for each language, the linker, etc.
If I remember correctly, they had a plug in for the front-end of each language, as well as the back-end, so you could modularize the CPU-specific optimizations across languages. Might be talking out my ass, though.
Eclipse is the best looking Java app I've ever seen. Congrats to IBM for taking the bold step of not using AWT/Swing, and replacing it with something decent (SWT/JFace).
Isn't this what ActiveState is trying to do with Komodo?
I use Komodo for all my at-home development of Python/Perl/HTML/Javascript/etc, and actually quite like it.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
The problems that come up will be "sins of omission". In order to avoid breaking a generalized interface, plugin makers may not create an interface the way that makes the most sense for a certain language.
Eg: has anyone used Visual Basic? The interface is built around what the language is good at (and the interface is a main reason for its popularity). While the same functionality could have come via a plugin, likely it wouldn't have. Instead, a tool like the form editor would be bundled with the other resources, rather than front and center in coding. This makes coding other types of projects awkward, but they aren't VB's strengths anyway...
In short, I think there are advantages to building a UI solely around a specific language.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
i've been using eclipse for 4 months or so and think it's the best IDE i've ever used. I don't think it's slow.. well it's still not a native app. and the motif stuff on *nix is still a bit slow but on windows and with the swt gtk bindings it rocks.
during the past months i haven't experienced any crashes or loss of data even though i'm on the integration builds.
to sum it up. a great platform which improves with every release.
I've got RH71, none of the Eclipse builds work without crashing every 5 minutes or so.
I tried this this app a few weeks ago, it's modular and configurable and has potential. It actually runs fairly fast under windows because they implemented their own (native to windows) GUI api (not Swing which is slow as hell). Basically I spent the whole time experimenting with just the Java GUI library they supply with it because I'm tired of watching my Swing apps chug along. As far as IDEs go... I work faster in others, much faster.
From the project page:
"an open extensible IDE for anything but nothing in particular...[value comes from] plug-ins that "teach" eclipse how to work with things"
Isn't that one description of emacs as well. Emacs has a, probably, justified reputation as being hard to use and extend. But is it really going to be that much easier to write extensions for Eclipse? And are those extension writers really going to make the extensions easy to use and with a consistant user interface? I have my doubts on both counts.
And the subject line was rhetorical.
I did a review of a few of the IDEs out there ,primarily for their java stuff. Based on my short try out, Eclipse wasn't wuite there for the Java stuff, but that would have been the plug in. I ended up with IDEA, and we'll probably have a few people here singing it's praises.
I think that the IDE still really needs to understanf the language to be effective, but maybe the plug-ins will solve that.
The cool things in IDEA, and I would love to see in Eclipse, is the refactorings, the ability to have multiple configurations for running and debugging in a single project (nice for unit tests), and the ability to run one program while debugging another, great for client-server type programming (If you view Servlets as the client, and EJBs as the server, but would work for other stuff as well.)
Yes I looked at netbeans. I just don't have the desktop programming power to make it run fast enough,especially doing a JBoss recycle. but I'll periodically re-evalute the options for my shop.
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
I used for a few days to see if I liked it. I ran it on Linux. The thing I hate the most was the user interface speed, and look. IBM didn't use standard AWT and Swing to create the user interface, but some IBM propriatary package. Not only does this seem to make it slow, but it is also God aweful on Linux.
Frankly the features may be better than anything else (free) on the market, but they can't make up for the UI. Currently I am using a demo of IDEA, and am quickly falling in love with it. Fastest Java IDE I have used to date, which isn't saying a lot.
IBM has to come up to speed a bit with the UI in order to compete on linux. Until they do, I will be staying well away from it.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Where the heck is the Intercal plug-in? :-)
Novel? Huh? Checkout www.netbeans.org. It's modular, open-source, and has been getting fast/frequent updates. It's written 100% pure java. Sun is using it as a backbone for a Fortran/C++ IDE, also http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/NewsItemView?news ID=145
Am I not looking hard enough or was there no screen shots to be had?
Fuck Ajit Pai
Will I be able to plug Vim into it as the editor? Personally, I don't think I could get any work done using any other editor, or at least similar keybindings.
Too bad it runs like ass on the celeron 400 I have at work...
anyone?
I have used it for a little while now and I have to say it is pretty nice. It includes allot of the best features of Visual Age for Java and makes those available for other langauges. It is a bit slow, but as Java apps go its not bad at all. Compared to JBuilder or Forte its veritable speed deamon (althow start up is rather slow).
I'm a programmer, I don't have to spell correctly; I just have to spell consistently
The most transparent (as in instantly responsive, and requiring no mental effort expended on performing rote tasks) IDE is two text editor (I favor emacs, but that's another rant) windows side by side on a 21 inch monitor, and half-a dozen xterms with shell prompts. Set up your repeated commands each in a shell, such that a trivial two-keystroke command will execute them. Important: set your mouse focus to be location based, not requiring a click to activate a window.
Thus, the only time your hands need to leave the keyboard is to make a vague mouse "gesture", moving to a general area of the screen to place the cursor in an xterm. None of this hunting through pulldown menus for the cryptic command that does desired variation of "Make (force | clean | all | libraries | autogen)".
A side benefit is that you're using gnu-make to do your builds (unless you're an idiot), so there's no bullshit build dependencies on somebody's favorite IDE.
Remain calm! All is well!
These guys basically just reinvented Windows then, right?
They advertise that this program has the ability (given proper plugins) to read any content type, modify it, and keep everything in a tidy package to present a uniform interface to a user. You could seriously modify their product description and replace "plug-in" with "application" and you could describe pretty much any OS in existence.
Maybe I'm just hard to impress. But it seems to me the last thing anyone needs is yet another monolithic application that tries to do everything.
I was also thinking about trying to fetch the source code to gcj, in order to have a more responsive app. Has anyone tried this yet?
Irritating wheel-reinvention, to an extent - NetBeans/Forte covers a lot of the same ground for pluggable IDEs - NetBeans 3 already supports Java, various scripting languages, XML, CVS, and has branched out into C/C++ support, and has a mature plugin API that works very well, based on dropping JavaBeans components conforming to particular interfaces into the IDE.
And, worst of all, despite Eclipse's much-vaunted "It's not Swing/Awt!" approach, I've found that the Netbeans Swing UI actually seems to be pretty good on my Linux box, while I've been hearing reports of Eclips'es GUI sucking on Linux.
In Eclipse's favour, it'll probably inherit VisualAge's GUI Beanbox from IBM, and that's much better than forte's Beanbox.
So far I haven't seen any evidence of cooperation between Eclipse and NetBeans. Sigh.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
You can't change the background color of the Java editing pane. Sounds silly, but important to me.
.classpath file in the project. WTF?
/.)
It has a cool feature of saving your recent changes. You can go back and diff the current file with all the changes you have saved and insert a previous change on a per-method basis, for example. Way better than unlimited undos, which a lot of editors have. Kind of a mini-source control available for those "oh shit" moments of deletion. You can set how long previous changes are saved. Neato.
Appending the classpath was unintuitive. I had to add a variable in a pref somewhere and then reference it in my
The views were very cool. You could switch among different views of your project at the click of a button. But I couldn't get the font small enough for my liking.
Only one real refactoring tool, extract method, is available. I can't remember if I got it to work or not.
But, in the end, I am going to spend actual $$ for Idea's IntelliJ - http://www.intellij.com. It's only $200 until 1/10. This is truly the Java editor of the gods.
Try it, you'll see. (I don't work for em.)
(this is my first post to
I was really positive about the technology it's built on from reading about it. Unfortunately when I installed it on my RedHat 7.2 box I got a rude shock... Even pure Java editors like Jext and Forte were blindingly fast compared to Eclipse. The box is a dual PIII 450 with 512 megs of ram, and Eclipse took more than a minute to open, then I could go get a cup of coffee between screen refreshes. I was the only one logged in and I don't run any servers on it, so the box was definately not low on resources.
I heard similar things from other people trying to use it under Linux and decided to leave it for a while. Have any workarounds been found?
Isn't netbeans/forte the same thing, an ide base, with alot of developer plugins floating around it? It's based on a Java core and not a C core, but other than that, is eclipse that same or even more modular..?
screenshots can be found here :o)
However, there's a feature of the Java and/or JDE modes in XEmacs that I've become unable to live without:
When you hit Tab, it doesn't necessarily insert some fixed number of spaces or tabs. It simply indents the current line properly. You know immediately that you're missing a bracket or a semicolon when you hit Tab and:
It would probably only take me a few days to adapt to a new editor, but why would I bother? :)
A GUI development environment... WHERE ARE THE SCREENSHOTS?!?!?! I wanna smack the guy who thought of building an IDE and not having screenshots on the program's web site. What kind of bass ackwards logic is that? Sure, i can get like 50 different versions of the source code, but i can't see the interface until after I install the program? How am I supposed to know if it's worth the trouble of compiling it all? How am I supposed to know if I'll like the interface? I just don't get it.
Some of these open source projects really need to get their rear in gear and start trying to sell their stuff. And I don't mean sell it for money, i just mean convince people that they should use the program. How am I supposed to know if this program is right for me? Sometimes it seems like we (the open source community) go to the other extreme from Micro$oft. They focus 90% of their efforts on convincing you that their stuff is right for you, and only put like 10% effort into the actual product. Open source projects constantly produce better quality products than Microsoft, yet so many people still use MS-Crap. Pay a little less attention to who is reading your source code, and a little more attention to who is actually USING YOUR SOFTWARE.
Personally, I am not going to go through the TROUBLE of compiling Eclipse, or meeting all of the DEPENDANCY requirements of an RPM before I have a taste of the interface.
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
Doesn't work on linux JDK 1.3.1, so I really couldn't tell you how it is. Bug report: http://dev.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=5845
Heh, I just can't get over the fact that the IDE we've been using internally for the last 6 months is getting so much play on slashdot and in the world-at-large.
One thing that's important to remember about eclipse is that it is a great deal more than your basic IDE. The pluggability really means that anything you can do in Java (or in principle, any language), you can make eclipse do. My department is focused entirely on using eclipse as an *application platform*. Think big. Yes, you can make it into a C/C++/Scheme/ML IDE, think bigger. Yes, you could definitely write a word processor plugin, and maybe plugin-ize an existing product. Think bigger. There's no reason in principle why you couldn't make a set of plugins that, for instance, made eclipse into something like zope or websphere -- your IDE could let you edit your php/jsp/perl, and then act as your development webserver too, for rapid prototyping. I dunno, I'm just pulling random things out of the air :) The point is, calling it modular might not be... emphatic enough. :)
As an IDE, it's pretty solid, I definitely encourage java developers to check it out, and as the C/C++ plugins solidify, I expect I'll move to it for my own C/C++ development too, if for no other reason than that I use it at work all the time. :) One thing that is both a blessing and a curse is that it does not (at least, our internal versions do not) come with a repository system a la Visual Age (IBM's older, less extensible Java IDE) -- instead that's up to you - we have teams using basic file system, cvs, cvs over ssh, and CMVC (a defect tracking and team file management tool that I imagine few outside IBM have ever seen. :) A curse in that out-of-the-box, you don't have team-managed repositories working like in VAJ, but a blessing in that you get to set up whatever fool system you like, maybe even keep whatever system you're already using. :)
Anyhow, just a few thoughts, the previous posts I've seen on eclipse seem to understate its extensibility. It's got the potential to be this decade's emacs - the application that is almost an operating system. :)
I haven't looked at it - but the plugin idea sounds like Forte for Java / aka. Netbeans - no?
/..sig file not found - permission denied.
I'm a full java developer. We ( my java dev team ) tried several java IDEs for a long time. And we sticked to JEdit for performance reasons. It's not an IDE, but it's the best programmer-oriented editor I have worked with to date; All java IDES we tried ( Borland's JBuilder, Oracle's JDeveloper and SUNs netbeans ) were so big and dogslow that we prefer the little and cute JEdit. Recently I began to work with IBM's eclipse, and now I am totally adicted to it. It's fast and confortable to work with ( good debugger and have intellysense-like functionality ). The windows versions feels like it was made by MS, but the linux version it's still slow (but workable) and feels horrible under it's patetic motif skin. I hope the IBM guys write the KDE port soon. If you think that MS were demanded by Sun for trying to make a native extension of java, it's so ironic to see IBM doing the same thing and make everyone happy ;-)
Whoa! For a moment there I thought I'd tabbed to a Chatzilla window of Undernet / #linux.
....
Has anyone used the opensource IDE Eclipse?
Cliff: probably
I've been using WSAP (WebSphere Aplication Devloper) which the IBM branded version of eclipse for about 1.5 months to develope a few Servlets and some standalone applications.
I find it very userfriendly and some of the features like the plugable JDK's are a god send for testing on multiple vendor JDK's. The ablilty to assosiate source and API documentation with libaries to trace back exceptions or the javadoc info for classes within the editor makes working with new API's a greate deal easier.
On a comparison note the only other Java IDE i've used was Oracle's JDeveloper which i found a lot harder to get to grips with.
Thats jsut my 2p's worth
Novel? Apple's MPW has been around for many years and is the same. It is an ide with modular plugins for pascal, java, c, c++ and anthing else you want to use.
For instance, VAJ was always difficult to use with CVS, but Eclipse support for CVS could not be better. Really outstanding.
Eclipse does need more memory than VAJ did (I run both on an IBM Aptiva with 64 mb of memory and the difference is notable) but given enough memory it runs fine. For those reporting stability problems remember that Eclipse runs under Java and all Java IDEs under Linux are not equal. IBM's tend to work best but they aren't flawless. The IBM JDK does work better than Sun/Blackdown for running Eclipse so try that and see if you don't like Eclipse better.
Eclipse so far lacks a GUI design tool but there seem to be several people at IBM and elsewhere working on one, so we should have several to choose from in time.
I like very much that Eclipse is the base for IBM's commercial offering WebSphere Application Developer (the successor to Visual Age for Java). This means that most plugins written for Windows should also be available on the Linux side and that IBM should be able to offer a Linux version of WSAD without much extra effort (something that probably wasn't true of VAJ.)
I find Eclipse very useable on its own and it has been a great help to my own free software project.
If I'm understanding this correctly, there is a plug-in arbitecture for the IDE to allow it to be customized to anyone's needs.
Guess what? Metrowerks has been doing this for years. CodeWarrior was modular and allowed the user/developer to extend the IDE in pretty much unlimited ways.
± 29 dB
My favorite windows text editor Textpad (http://www.textpad.com/) allows modular syntax highlighting, and supports scripting commandline things (compile this using...., send through cvs, etc) into the dropdown menus. It recognizes and can save things 'unix style'.
Better yet it is freely downloadable ($20 for a few 'advanced features'). One of my required apps with any windows install.
NeXT (and now Apple) have Project Builder and Interface Builder, which were language neutral, and PB supports Java, C, C++, Objective-C, and people can make plugins to support various other languages.
It's the magic of O-O when applied properly. And those tools existed at least as far back as 1989!
i - This sig provided by
Haven't tried Eclipse, but as someone living in Emacs and coming from Python to C++, I have grown totally dependent on the ability of Emacs Python and C++ modes to automatically indent correctly with tab. Indentation is part of the syntax of Python, so you can actually create bugs by indenting incorrectly. And I am more used to Python than C++, so I have a bit of a hard time with all the braces, and the automatic indentation thing immediately shows if there are too many or few braces.
Suppose syntax-sensitive automatic indentation upon hitting tab could be added to Eclipse if it is as modular as advertised?
There are even screen shots there.
Or am I missing somthing, does Eclipse offer something more?
It was dark and I didn't have my contacts...
Anyone have a screenshot of this butt-ugly program?
;)
For the previous two months I was using Jbuilder 4 from Borland (the free one) and found it quite limiting. Jbuilder claims to have an emacs keymapping, but it wasn't close enough, and didn't allow me to customize. Plus Jbuilder was fairly slow compared to Eclipse.
Eclipse has very nice window support, allowing me to position my workspace how I'd like. The remote debugger was very easy to attach to my weblogic instance, and I've found the editor to be acceptable so far. (I haven't tried switching to using Emac's shortcuts yet... ).
Unfortunately Emac's just isn't integrated enough for me to do Java development. I still use it for my regular editor and quick cleanups though.
Dave
I can't see the logic of building something like this in Java (of all things), except perhaps development speed...? Developers are the most impacient and nit-picky of all computer users, and an application this big written in Java cannot help but be god awful slow. If my every day develoment tools took 30-60 seconds to load *every time I open them* I'd probably gone into gardening a long time ago. Then there's the fact that they didn't use Swing or anything else I can identify. Weird.
FWIW, Borland knew this would happen to them if they did JBuilder entirely in Java, so most of it is done in what I assume is C++ (or Delphi, whatever. Anything that compiles). IMO JBuilder is the best dedicated Java editor, hands down (for Windows).
The concept of course is excellent. Some posters have mentioned the similarites with NetBeans but I think Eclipse is a lot more than an IDE with a plug-in architecture. I haven't played enough with it yet.
Then there's also VS.Net - other than the stock Microsoft languages there are connectors for Perl, Python (ActiveState) and Fortran (Fujitsu), among others. It's blazing fast, but again, that's largely because it didn't eat its own dogfood. Nothing this complex could have been written in C# and be as fast. Ergo, you don't write your development environments in interpreted languages.
My 0.02 of the year.
They are now up at my site, oob
Completely
Masochistic
Version
Control
CMVC was unbelievably painful to use.
*shiver*
Ok, that's the end of my nightmare flashback.
I'm not looking forward to the migration but when we're all on CVS (or whatever) I think we'll be a lot better off, and will probably have an opportunity to save some money on development tools.
My one current gripe is that IBM bundles ClearCaseLT and a plugin to use it with WebSphere Application Developer (based on Eclipse) but does not supply any documentation on how to use the two together.
CVS integration on the other hand is very well done.
Go here to see the same things said of NetBeans
Once again, this is nothing new. Together Control Center is the best IDE/UML Modeling tool in existance, and it is not designed around any specific language. It will work with Java just as well as C# or C++ or whatever. And unlike Eclipse, Together Control Center is the best IDE written in existence and does a lot of useful tasks. Check it out at http://www.togethersoft.com
:)
Ohh yeah, and for the linux nazis who never wanna pay for stuff, this program with all the bells and whistles cost around $7000 US.
But I must say, we are in a new world, the technologies available to us programmers are very powerful and robust, it is not coincidence the best IDEs written these days are written in Java.
(TCC, IDEA, Eclipse, NetBeans, etc)
Eclipse brings in some features from VisualAge for Java that I've always loved. First, every single time I hit "Save", it compiles. I get immediate feedback. Second, the scrapbook rules. Being able to try a bit of Java code at any time is great.
I'm quite happy with the painless CVS integration. Eclipse has the easiest CVS/SSH setup I've ever seen. I'm able to reference multiple CVS repositories from my workspace without even thinking about it.
The different perspectives take getting used to. I still get lost from time to time. I don't know which one I'm in and I don't know it until I get the "wrong" context menu. It doesn't help that all the perspective icons look alike.
Overall, I'm fully supporting Eclipse--even to the point of recommending it to my clients.
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
Never been much of a leg man.
Well, I took your advice and tried it. And I can't tell you how it is. After about 20 minutes of fiddling (why don't they have an installer?) I came up with the following:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/sun/jdi/connect/Connector
at com.intellij.debugger.a.t.a(t.java:1)
at com.intellij.project.a.b.a(b.java:14)
at com.intellij.project.a.e.d(e.java:4)
at com.intellij.project.a.e.c(e.java:15)
at com.intellij.project.a.e.a(e.java:14)
at com.intellij.idea.a.a(a.java:125)
at com.intellij.idea.Main.a(Main.java:17)
at com.intellij.idea.Main.main(Main.java:19)
Their site doesn't seem to have a knowledge base or anything either.
*shrug*
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
The best part of the Eclipse IDE is that it automaticaly compiles your changes when you save a file. This drasiticly reduces development time since the edit -> compile -> fix errors -> compile development cycle is amost transparent to the user. Did you just make a chanage which break something the compiler can detect?? The IDE will show you where you broke things.
Because of that and the inteli-sense stuff. I could not go back to using normal editors.
For the love of the code,
cojonudo14
Who hunts a post like this down when it's already at 0 and puts it to -1? Who reads at 0? And the worst thing they see while reading at 0 is a stupid post about karma that's clearly marked OT? Someone explain?
I'm glad I'm distracting idiot moderators from damaging actual conversations. Who knows, maybe this comment will absorb some more soon-to-be-misspent mod points. I'll leave it at 2 for just that reason.
.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Anybody working on a C# plug-in for Eclipse? Could Ximian's work be incorporated in here?
But the age of lisp machines came and went without your notice. Do a keyword search for "Symbolics" sometime on Google.
Why am I talking about lisp machines? Emacs is a lisp interpreter that happens to do text editing as a side effect. Most of Emacs is written in lisp. When you talk about doing everything in emacs, you're talking about a lisp machine.
The technology is very well thought out. What seperates it from things like NetBeans is that plugsins are beyond first-class objects: they are the only type of object.
Let me explain. Everything in Eclipse is a plugin. Plugins publish (as XML) things called "extension points" that other plugins hook into. All that XML is processed at bootup time, and it allows the basic Eclipse engine to do a lot without loading much Java code. Plugins declare new menu items, tool bars, editors, actions, whatever but no Java code is loaded until the user actively selects on of those new options.
I'm personally looking forward to writing some plugsin related to by own open source project, Tapestry.
I've also been very impressed by their very open process. They have an open Bugzilla and very quick response times to bugs and issues. Several suggestions I've made have already made it into the project, and they don't know me from Adam. Eclipse is not perfect, but they are very keen on improving the rough edges.
The interface is very clean and configurable, it really molds to how you, the user, want to run things. All those draggable views and all.
There's already a C/C++ plugin. I'd love to see a Python plugin (perhaps using Jython?). There's a huge amount of functionality that hasn't been documented yet (do I smell an O'Reilly book?).
I find it to be about has fast as Netbeans on my work machine (PIII 1ghz, 512MB) and a lot easier and more intuitive to use and configure. The UI is snappier (and prettier), and its loaded with features. It's like Emacs, you keep discoverring new things it does.
Much like Forte and JEdit it is too slow on my 500MHz machine - they are really cool and shows great potential, but it is very painful to try and work with. My 1GHz at work managed Eclipse pretty well though, so all hope is not out. But that was a very clean version, with no plugins, and I didn't have a semi-sized project open either, just tried a few classes to see how it worked.
:)
I see the potential, but so far it is just not up to speed for me. Maybe I'll just need to upgrade my equipment, I am always looking for excuses to spend money I don't really have on my gear.
I've never run across a good IDE for Unix yet. So far they all have not even come close to doing the job. Feature-lacking and buggy across the board. My latest try was with Sun Workshop, and it was as bad as the rest. It was riddled with showstopping bugs that make it useless for me.
That's not to say that there aren't any good IDEs for Unix, but I haven't found one yet. Should anyone know of any that have good source code-level debugging capability, can properly handle threaded programs, and can interoperate with GNU autotools, all without crashing or exhibiting other crippling, weird behavior, I would be ecstatic.
If Eclipse IDE can do this, wonderful. I don't care if it uses plugins or not. All I care is if it supports all of the above for C development on Linux/Solaris, and in the end simplifies my development efforts rather than complicating them. I guess that should be the ultimate goal of any IDE.
> I must say that the idea is novel enough,
> instead of building an environment around a
> specific language/compiler, you build a
> framework and have plugins support the specific
> features that you want.
You mean like DevStudio? MSFT has been doing just this for YEARS...edit C++/Java/HTML in the same IDE...at one point you could even download a M68K compiler plugin...
I've only recently grabbed the 'anjuta' IDE (Gnome), and have been pretty impressed so far. .net' crap).
I'm a sometimes user of Visual C++, and although it leaves a bad taste in my mouth... VC isn't a bad development environment. (I refuse, however, to 'upgrade' to the 'visual studio
The ajunta interface is pretty familiar, has most of the VC features that make coding easier, and also has a 'subroutine folding' feature that I love - and haven't seen since my Amiga days. The GDB integration is good - integration of 'run to cursor' is a wonderful thing.
Not sure if it supports Java. http://anjuta.sourceforge.net/ for those that are interested.
Red.
Hey -
I've been using Eclipse now for a couple of weeks, and have managed to bring an existing Java project consisting of a couple hundred source files into it, and compiling fine.
Things I Like:
1> Great code editor. Nice highlighting of matching parens and curly braces. Fairly instantaneous pop-up of attributes and methods when you press the period.
2> JUnit integration is strong. JUnit is good -it won't solve all your problems, but it's a nice safety net.
3> CVS Integration. Good source control integration is a must, otherwise I won't use it.
Things I'm not so keen on:
1> Seems to be good for Java, but not much else. I know it's still early, but I'd like to see more support for web targetted development.
2> Since it's supposedly using Ant behind the scenes, where's the XML config, and a GUI editor for said config? That would go a long way toward fixing #1 above.
Anyhow - with CVS integration, and JUnit, I'm not looking back. NetBeans was OK - but slow as heck, even if it bundles in more functionality. I'm betting Eclipse will gain rapidly.
- Porter
I am using Eclipse 2.0 Beta for about a month now. I am increasingly becoming comfortable with it. I like the user interface better than NetBeans. You can run each Java class file. But the Ant integration is not as good as NetBeans. But the source editing and object browsing is far superior to NetBeans. Eclipse offers on-the-fly compiling which compiles code as you save/type it and gives you compilation errors on the lines you just typed. This I think is a great productivity enhancer which saves your time by not having you go through each and every compilation error and fixing them. The refactoring support is great. I changed a package name and the import statements were automatically changed. It is fairly robust and has not crashed on me given that it is a beta version. I find this to be very promising tool platform. Give it a shot and you'll be happy for it. Trust me.
I want vi keybindings!
... And don't get me started on Ctrl-C and friends.
It is too painfull to use on my laptop with , ,
Big.
Slow.
Still under development.
Promises to change the world as we know it -- real soon now.
But in the meantime, doesn't do anything particularly useful.
This is why I "crossed over" to M$ after being a SunOS / Linux fan for over a decade. 20 years of developing Big, Important Software, and the *nix community still can't agree on which key is backspace.
There I was, sitting there trying to fdisk a hard drive in single-user text mode and I made a typo. I hit backspace. The terminal spits out '^?'. I hit delete. It prints something like '^[[3e'. I hit ctrl-H and ctrl-U. It types '^H^U'. I reboot and install Windows 98 on the ***damned thing. F*ck 'em. No joke, I haven't booted Linux since.
Same thing with the GUI. Ten million people developing X Windows and it doesn't have buttons and scrollbars. Don't you already have the latest, greatest widget toolkit lib installed? Gnome, KDE or Enlightenment? Or none of the above? After putzing around with Linux for a year or so, you might end up with a useable desktop environment! Thanks but no thanks.
You found the hard way to do something simple. Mostly you add to the classpath for a project from the Project's Properties pane, Java Build Path -> Libraries.
... you say (for example), that you need to add JBOSS_DIR/lib/ejb.jar to your classpath, and set JBOSS_DIR to c:/Jboss2.4.3.
/usr/lib/jboss/2.4.3 (or whatever).
You can add Jars from within the project (i.e., for things that include Jars as part of the distribution), or Jars from arbitrary locations on your hard drive.
Or neater yet (if you develop in a team environment), you can add relative to a classpath variable. That's what you hit. It's similar to Makefile variables
Meanwhile, another team member syncs up and gets your classpath definitions, but (being on Unix), sets JBOSS_DIR to
Notice, you can keep even a complex classpath configured in Eclipse, and shared via CVS even across platforms. Handy.
Advantages of QB.EXE:
1. you make a change and you hit f5 and see the effects instantly
2. sometimes you can make a change and the program will pick up right where you broke into the run
3. You can test your subroutines by calling them from the Immediate window.
4. You can run code that reminds you of the colors or what the extended keys are from the Immediate window
5. You can load text files into it.
6. You can set watches, Watchpoints and breakpoints
7. you can remind yourself of what your program printed to the screen by presssing F4
8. You can trace back through jumps where your progam has been.
Now all you Like-Java-dislike-Sun people can show your dissupport of Sun by using the tool named just for this purpose! Use it where "Sun don't shine"!
(on a somewhat more serious note; yes, both Sun ["Blue Bombers"] and IBM do name some projects according to the intended target)
And it sucks ass, big time. Ugly, intensely slow even with 640 megs of RAM.
./, I was really excited by the description, and spent a lot of time trying to get a copy from the /.-ed servers. I installed it, watched it crawl insanely (Like 30 seconds to resize a window), and laughed, wondering if this was some kind of a joke.
When this was first discussed months ago on
Best thing that happened, was it got me looking around for a Java IDE, and discovered that NetBeans had gotten infinitely better since the last time I had looked at it. I've been using it ever since. NetBeans smokes it.
I find all these comments about Eclipse not being novel, etc. boring. (that was a nice inviting way to start a reply eh?). Who cares if it's novel or not? Not much is these days. All that matters is if it is worth using.
:)
One other thing that's interesting. A lot of folks tout it as a great IDE/editor/environment because it does a nice job with their Java work, etc. I primarily work in Java, but, as I would guess many others do, I also use Perl, HTML, XML, Python, PHP, bash/sh, and various others.
I've used JBuilder, and if you truly only work in Java, it's pretty rockin (I found it nicer than NetBeans, VisualAge, Together, Emacs, etc.). But, at least for me, I like to have a single editor (which is what I spend 80%+ of my time in) that works for everything I do. This is pretty tough, as various languages and tasks are can have wide ranging needs. Personally, I've solved this for my needs with Visual SlickEdit. It won't be for everyone, but for me, it supports all the languages I use, and does so very well, provides a nice UI, starts up just as fast as vi (and massively faster than Emacs), isn't as cryptic to use as Emacs, yet is equally as powerful (in my use/needs), and runs on the platforms I need (Linux, Windows).
Secondly, as others have pointed out, my environment (i.e. place I work, companies I work for, etc.) require the ability to integrate or use a variety of other tools, including varying source code control systems, build/make systems, debuggers, and so on.
Therefore, to me, Eclipse is very interesting because it is language and tool independent, yet provides a nice environment to work in, that works on all the platforms I need (although I'd like to see this further expanded say to MacOS X), and has the potential to appeal to nearly any developer because of it's flexibility and expandability. Once they have variety of keybindings, and probably get a few more versions along (with more tool, language, etc. support), it seems like it may be incredibly appealing to a huge number of developers. Throw in the open source and free aspect and it becomes that much more appealing. The money I spent on SlickEdit is hands down the best money I've ever spent on software, but I'd still prefer it be open source, and secondarily, free.
For the time being, "X Windows" as someone else said, is my IDE. Now I just wish Windows 2000 had a nice virtual desktop system like X Windows
I must say that the idea is novel enough, instead of building an environment around a specific language/compiler, you build a framework and have plugins support the specific features that you want.
Novel? Sounds just like Microsoft's Visual Studio. Visual Basic, Visual C/C++, even JavaScript, and any other language they want, all inside the same development platform. Really nicely done, too.
What I think is the most interesting thing about Eclipse is the native framework. This allows one to develop a gui runs in native code. If you hang around Java newsgroups for very long, it is pretty obvious that a large portion of the Java community is in positive histrionics about the slow speed of Swing.
This manuever by IBM could really splinter Java - with many users dropping Swing for SWT, since it is so much snappier. Not exactly a good position for Java to be in with Microsoft coming out with a Java clone.
Speaking of Microsoft, with C# they are getting very good performance by precompiling their programs to native code, which they save as a file. They only recompile when the CLR changes. None of this Java-esk Just-In-Time compiling. Why can't Java learn to do this trick -- wouldn't it improve its performance?
RM
Actually, a great deal of VS.NET was written in C#, especially the user interface. C# isn't interpretted, it's JIT executed, which does make a difference, especially considering the Microsoft CLR contains a utility to precompile and cache larger assemblies for immediate access and no performance hit (which is sweet.) VS.NET is quite a bit slower than VS5/6, and has a larger memory requirement, but is certainly usable. It's plugin architecture is awesome, and I currently use the release candidate to compile assembler, C++, C#, Visual Basic, Perl, Python, XSLT, and COBOL, using the third party plugins where necessary, although it will debug any executable as disassembly, or source if you can provide the PDB debug database and the source files.
We found there were a number of foibles with the CVS integration, but nothing terminal. The thing that really ratted it for us was (or have they fixed this?)
- No SourceSafe integration
- The editor just... wasnt that nice. Too many keyboard shortcuts that we're used to, things like ctrl-backspace, didnt work.
- The code completion is nothing compared to the smart code completion offered in IntelliJ IDEA.
- We couldnt work out how to make multiple run configurations, Unit tests be here, Main class(es) be here..
We really felt like in a version or so, it would be a very usable and competitive IDE, but for our purposes (Web application development with SourceSafe source control), didnt seem to quite be there yet.dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
I know its a sin to say so here (hence the AC posting), but these tools are pale shadows of what MS is about to deliver with VS.Net. The failing of that product is that it does not have native Java support, but you can bet someone will provide it. ActiveState already offers a Perl plugin. Take a look at it, its two years ahead of where IBM wants to go (unfortunately, as usual).
theServerSide
about
Eclipse,
NetBeans,
and
IntelliJ IDEA.
Most of the posters there have used one of these IDEs.
IBM's Software Donation: Move To Eclipse NetBeans?
NetBeans IDE 3.3 released
IBM to open source WebSphere tools
threads on Eclipse
threads on NetBeans
threads on IDEA
Eclipse is a product of
Object Technology International Inc.,
which also produced VisualAge for Java.
And as the article "Refactoring with Eclipse" mentioned,
"...Erich Gamma is the team lead for Java tools for Eclipse. Gamma was one of the Gang of Four known for creating the book Design Patterns...".
I think that Eclipse will be a high quality software.
IBM's Software Donation: Move To Eclipse NetBeans?
NetBeans IDE 3.3 released
IBM to open source WebSphere tools
threads on Eclipse
threads on NetBeans
threads on IDEA
Eclipse is a product of Object Technology International Inc., which also produced VisualAge for Java.
And as the article "Refactoring with Eclipse" mentioned, "...Erich Gamma is the team lead for Java tools for Eclipse. Gamma was one of the Gang of Four known for creating the book Design Patterns...". I think that Eclipse will be a high quality software.
By far the largest majority of readers read at 0. Most people do not have an account and Slashdot defaults them to 0. For the longest time, I did not have an account. I read at the default 0 and posted at the default -1 granted to Anonymous Cowards. For the longest time, I could not even read my own posts. Even now that I have an account, I still read at 0 (again default).
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
The thing that is cool about Eclipse is that the workbench can be much more than a simple IDE. As a plugin developer, I can use the workbench as an integrated desktop environment that allows me to keep all of my applications in an easily managed, well organized framework. For example, I find that I always have an mp3 player running when I'm writing code, so I quickly wrote an mp3 view for the workbench. This is a trivial example, but it suggests that a user could have a set of plugins that are organized into pages to perform common tasks, all readily available through the workbench.
The first project that I can think that did this was turbovision, the environment used for Turbo C, Turbo Pascal, etc, and which is now used in exactly such an environment.
In fact, most of the modern professional GUIs are used for multiple languages. I have a theory as to why: the constructs of a language are basically the same, meaning that if a company wishes to create IDEs for multiple languages, then the best way would simply be to make a parser front-end that converts everything to data structures. It is therefore in their best interest to make IDEs modular.
But...I can think of a very good reason for keeping a GUIs language-independant. For languages that have it, introspection has allowed IDEs to detect structures far better than the traditional IDE - case in point is Borland's JBuilder, which can be used to modify a user interface using RAD which was hand-created (most IDEs can't do that). However, this requires that the RAD be written in the language - making it NOT language-independant.
My conclusion is that having an all-in-one IDE is kind of like having an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax. Sure, all of the features work, but none of them work really well.
Of course, I suppose we could have a GUI for C/C++, Fortran, Cobol, and Assembly, since all of those are strictly compiled (I know there are other compiled languages, but those are the ones that lots of people use).
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Is this project truely open source, or does it merely have source code available? For the difference, please refer to the free software foundation's website.
Generally, when something has source available, but isn't open source, the company or people behind the program are just looking for geeks to fix their bugs for free, and anticipating closing the source once the more difficult bugs are worked out.
How is this a troll?
I feel the same way. Most of the apps written in Java that I have used can be very slow. Especially alot of the IDEs.
JCreator for instance is written in C and is very fast. That Sun IDE thing is very slow to me.
Can anyone explain in English (not the legalese found at http://www.eclipse.org/legal/cpl-v05.html) the difference between the Common Public Licence Version 0.5 that applies to Eclipse and the Gnu Public Licence?
Thanks.
Eclipse seems well thought out except for one thing - it's missing code completion. This is helpful for reallyLongMethodNamesInJava, for not having to look up api docs all the time to determine method calls etc.
If someone can point me to a plug-in which rectifies this for Eclipse I would be grateful.
Code completion is one of the reasons I am currently sticking with JBuilder 5 (though I am rapidly beginning to like Intellij IDEA, its refactoring support is awesome)
People looking for some related screenshot(s)
visit this page over at IBM Developerworks
Isn't this doing what Kdevelop version 3.0 (http://www.kdevelop.org) is trying to do except in C++?
I don't know whether there's active work being done in the area, but it's an idea that's been toyed with on the newsgroup, certainly. I'd love to see it, myself.
Jon
a slightly slow but
For me, the discussion ends right there. If it's slow, it's crap as far as I'm concerned.
When I first tried Eclipse, I was very impressed.
First of all, it looks good. Much better than any other Java program I tried.
Second, it used a single main window instead of multiple floating ones. Us stupid Windows programmers find multiple floating windows visually confusing. There is nothing worse than seeing one's desktop bitmap with all those shiny icons in betweens one's editor and one's toolbar. (Even MDI is dying out as a concept and being replaced with a single window with tabs representing open files at the top. The only people still prefering MDI are traders, because they generally set their workspaces up to view as much info as possible and then just monitor them.)
Third, it's the first well-made piece of software I've ever seen from IBM. IBM has a history of producing inferior software on the PC platform. I once heard someone from IBM refer to his colleagues as "ninjas". If they spent more time working on their programs and less time dressed in black pajamas throwing metal stars, maybe their code would be better.
Fourth, the plug-in concept is well executed. Usually abstraction and usability don't go well hand in hand, but using Eclipse was just as comfortable as using JBuilder which is a Java-only IDE.
So why an I not using Eclipse? Because their Java plug-in is still not robust enough.
I had a rather large project that I was working on. It worked fine in JBuilder and JDK with Ant. But when I loaded those same files into Eclipse, simply touching some of them caused Eclipse to puke.
Must have been some programming construct I used. But if a tool doesn't offer a simple migration path, most people are not going to switch. More to that point: Why can't Eclipse import JBuilder and Forte project files? That would also ease the transition.
Dejan
www.jelovic.com
> Eclipse is designed for a much broader audience
> than Emacs.
So, like Emacs, it is also designed to be used for non-programmers? Emacs is not just designed to be an IDE, it is designed for all tasks that can somehow be conceived to be related to text editing. Aiding programmers is just one aspect.
> In addition, it's a cross-platform app, written
> almost entirely in Java (with the exception of
> JNI hooks for access to "native" widgets for
> Windows/Motif/GTK+).
You mean it is written in a propritary, unportable language, using propritary, unportable hooks, which Sun marketing have somehow managed to convince a generation of inexperienced programmers is a synonym of "portability"?
There is only one usful definition of portable, and that is ported. I bet Emacs runs on platforms that does not and will never run Java applications, certainly not ones relying on Windows/Motif/Gtk+ calls. Emacs can ustilize thes libraries, but doesn't rely on them.
I'm sure Eclipse is useul, it provides an alternative to people who dislike the Emacs UI, and probably even have unique features. But broadness in either application range or platform range are not among these.
I'm an experience Java developer (since the language first came out, and professionally for 6 or so years).
I've used Kawa (which I liked, but Windows only), Visual Age, Visual Cafe, and IntelliJ. IntelliJ is the best out there, but since it is so expensive, I decided to try Eclipse.
The GUI is amazing - clean, crisp and fast under Windows 2000 (corporate standard). It seems to have all the bells and whistles of IntelliJ (code completion, refactoring, CVS and ANT support, code-formatting support) but looks like you could plug a bunch more stuff into it.
I found it less than intuitive in some things. To set the classpath, you had to be in the Java view, right click the project (the head of the tree), and select Properties. Took forever to figure that out.
Second, it insists on putting the compiled code within the project (you can't export it to, say, weblogic/classes, which is not inside your project).
Third, it moves everything... text file, xml, properties files; I don't need all that moved. I tried to set it use just the key folders in my project, but it seemed to ignore them.
Fourth, I find all the views confusing. I want just a nice simple view. Yes, the flexibility and number of views is great if you are using it for multiple languages and projects, but I am not.
I'd love to use this, and I'd love to hear that it runs quickly on Linux (other posts I've read says it's very slow). But there is some weirdness there.
Unfortunately, the documentation is thin, and the FAQ doesn't answer many frequently answered questions (like how to set the classpath). I think better documentation would help a whole bunc, and some more flexibility on the weirdness of the project directory and build path would nice.
If you can refute some of my statements, would like to hear it, because I'd like to use this tool, but I can't spend a week figuring it out.