Eclipse 2.1 Released

insomnia writes "Eclipse 2.1 has been unleashed to the world today. Eclipse is an open-source Java IDE environnement and I highly recommend it; developing under your favorite text editor feels like comparing Eclipse to the dinosaur age - I can't live without refactoring now. You can see what's new in this release here."

Comments

Wow.

[Samrobb]

That's all I can say... they've certainly packed an awful lot into this release. The JDT team, in particular, seems to be consistent about picking up some of the best features of other IDEs and editors and incorporating them into Eclipse.

If you do Java development, I'd recommend giving Eclipse a try. I've been using it for about a year now, to do plugin developent for Eclipse itself, and I'm still finding out new tricks and shortcuts to make my life easier.

If you do C/C++ development, check out the CDT project. While the current incarnation (1.0.1) of CDT is definitely usable, there's a lot of work going on to expand the capabilities of the C/C++ support and bring it up to par with the Java development tools - adding in things like incremental compilation, source navigation/browsing, refactoring, and all the other IDE goodies that Java devlopers already enjoy.

Plus - there's over 250 plugins available for Eclipse, including things like an RSS channel monitor for slashdot in your IDE.

Re:Java

[Dr. Bent]

My company's entire business model is centered around making enterprise applicatons in Java. It's extremely efficent and performant for server-side apps and web services. We also have Java client side apps that are as fast and memory efficent as any of our competitor's products (that are not written in Java).

Java will run as fast or as slow as you make it. We've re-written C applicatons in Java and actually made them run faster by improving the architecture. If you try to write a Java app using C/C++ programming techniques, it will suck. If you take the time to learn how Java is supposed to work, you'll be 10 times more productive and create a product of equal (or better) quality.

Finally!!!

[jzs9783]

Having worked on WSAD at IBM using Eclipse 2.0.1 for development, I have been waiting for this release for quite some time! The main improvement I noticed in RC1/2 was significant speed improvement, especially upon loading.

People may think Java is dead, but it is far from it, and Eclipse will keep those who must (or want to) code in it very very happy. If you know the features, it makes life so much easier. You can have your VI if you want, but when developing REAL applications you need more than a text editor if you want the software released before it's obsolete. I strongly urge you to just test it out and give it a chance - it is by far the best IDE I have ever used.

Re:Java

[methuseleh]

I'm no programmer... I can hack out ugly code in PHP, Perl, and JavaScript, and that's about it. And I can't answer your question w/ regards to developing in Java...

But... I do know that Eclipse is a general-purpose IDE which happens to be written in Java... You can use Eclipse to develop in other languages by installing the appropriate language plug-in.

I just installed Eclipse last week & I'm going to use it for PHP development...

w00t

[tulare]

From the whatsnew:

Java stack traces in the console now appear with hyperlinks. When you place the mouse over a line in a stack trace, the pointer changes to the hand and the stack trace is underlined. Pressing the mouse button opens the associated Java source file and positions the cursor at the corresponding line.

I'm probably a big dork, but I've never seen this feature before, and I'm sure of some great uses for it!
Downloading...

good education

[hlee]

I've been using eclipse since 2.0, and have been closely following its development - at first out of curiosity (when I discovered Erich Gamma of the Design Patterns fame was on the project), but have over time learnt a great deal from their articles and best practices...

• They probably have the best document about evolving Java APIs, i.e. maintaining backwards compatibility.
• Meeting deadlines. When they publish a game plan, they stick to it - very rarely missing their milestones. They've long adopted continuous integration (automated builds, unit tests), and frequent releases.
• SWT - their cross platform widget set, which has ports for most windowing systems under the sun. Its a lot faster and looks better than Swing. Its really a very thin JNI layer (C to Java interface) on top of the native APIs, so if you've programmed in GTK, you could take a look at the wrappers and figure out pretty quickly how to use SWT. It does have problems if there are humongous amounts of calls to be made (like with large tables - in which case you can just use Swing).

Anyway, one of my favourite features is its scrapbook that lets you execute Java statements on the fly like an interpreted language.

Worth a try if you haven't experienced it. I should know... there's an unused paid JBuilder license still sitting in my drawer.

Re:Still unusable

[miniver]

You're missing the point. So Eclipse doesn't provide a Tomcat plugin; big deal. A number of other developers provide plugins to do almost anything you might want, most of them open source (though there are some commercial plugins.) Have a look at the SysDeo Tomcat Plugin before you pass judgement on Eclipse.

My only gripe with Eclipse plugins is that Eclipse doesn't have a central repository that uses their automatic install/update mechanism for plugins to save people from having to hunt for the plugins. Instead they've let the community pick up the slack -- so you sometimes have to hunt around looking for just the right plugin.

Eclipse Does Swing!

[alacqua]

Ive seen posts here and on previous articles implying that eclipse forces developerse to use the SWT. Am I missing something? Id swear I wrote Swing code with eclipse. My (limited) understanding is that eclipse is written in Java and the eclipse developers chose to use the SWT, but that in no way affects the way you write your code. In particular, you may freely write Swing code while using eclipse.

Frankly, I dont give a damn what toolkits the eclipse developers have used. It is a great, free, open source product. I'll worry about the SWT when I develop for eclipse and not with eclipse.

I think this is an important point, so if someone with a little more knowledge of the subject can confirm this, please do so. Or please educate me if I am wrong.

Re:Emacs for the new millenium

[pldms]

With respect to SWT, the Mac OS X port is VERY young compared to the Windows, Motif, GTK, and even QNX Photon ports. It will be faster over time.

If you're finding Eclipse slow try editing Eclipse.app/Contents/Info.plist and change JVMVersion to 1.4.1. Seems to make a big difference on my machine.

(You need to have Java 1.4.1 installed, of course)