Slashdot Mirror
Eclipse Reaches Version 3.0
Tarantolato writes "The Eclipse Foundation has released version 3.0 of its open-source Java-based IDE. Eclipse backers like IBM say the program offers not only increased productivity and ease of use, but also a plugin-based architecture for creating 'rich client' applications with the networking capabilities of web-based apps and the persistence and native widgets of desktop applications. The Lotus Workplace platform is already Eclipse-based. Some in the Java community, however, are concerned with Eclipse's use of SWT rather than the standard Swing widget set, and some analysts think that project is part of a 'broader challenge to Microsoft's entire .Net development framework' from IBM. Meanwhile, Eclipse executives are attempting to woo Microsoft into joining the foundation."
If anyone's interested in Python support in Eclipse, I use and recommend pydev. It's certainly incomplete, but it has syntax highlighting, a class/method browser, realtime syntax checking, and there's a debugger which I couldn't get working.
That's the beaty of it, it's not just a Java IDE, it can be anything.
:o)
There's already a plugin that mostly works for editing PHP so why don't you get a few java/ruby hackers together and create one?)
As for a mail reader, I don't know about that, but there is tetris and snake available
I am NaN
Eclipse is a framework for developing client side applications - i.e, it makes it far faster and easier (once you learn it anyway!) to create client applications. It makes it easy to create "Views", "Editors", "Perspectives", wizards, dialogs, property editors, etc., and connect them all together. It's created with the SWT GUI toolkit, which is far better/faster than Swing. One such client application, what many people think of as "Eclipse", is the Java IDE. If you need to create a complex, cross-platform client application in Java, the Eclipse framework would be good way to do it.
Eclipse is an extensible application framework.
At the moment it's been extended to be useful in writing Java programs (code completion, code folding, code refactoring etc).
There is also a PHP plugin/development mode in active development (it is now somewhat useable). The real crux of ecplise is that it can be whatever you want it to be (but a lot of people, myself included simply use it as a kick ass Java IDE).
I am NaN
why are Swing widgets "lightweight" if they are a full implementation rather than a thin wrapper
The term 'Lightweight' refers to the interaction with the operating system, not the size of the source code.
The SwingWT project gives you the best of both worlds for developing your Java GUIs. It's an in-progress implementation of the Swing and AWT apis using SWT to draw the widgets. Looks much, much better than Swing, but still lets you use the nice API that many developers like. And for platforms where SWT isn't running, you can go back to the normal Swing classes. Java 1.5's Swing is supposed to be much more themeable and support anti-aliased fonts, so that will mitigate a lot of Swing's ugliness.
There's a Ruby-Eclipse project... last release was in May of this year, so perhaps it's pretty active...
The Army reading list
They even have a Refactoring Support Plugin newly included these days. It appears to include
Rename Local Variable
Rename Instance Variable
Rename Class Variable
Rename Global Variable
Rename Method
Rename Constant
Extract Method
Pull Up Method
Pull Down Method
It (the Plugin) was written by the folks behind the Ruby Refactoring Browser which also seems to work under EMACS .. huh, go figure. ;)
I haven't used FreeRIDE in awhile as I'm busy staring at code here and don't want to switch editors in midstream really, but it's coming along slowly but surely. Maybe it'll be what you're looking for.
Kevin
I would hardly call your post a comparison -- all you did was list a few bullets about VS .NET. I guess we're supposed to assume
that Eclipse does NOT have any of the listed traits? Hmmm, I'll have
to disagree there.
Furthermore, I think you've made a common mistake in assuming that Eclipse is only an IDE. Rather, it is an application framework that is particularly well suited for an IDE, among other things. Many people see the Java Development Toolkit, with is often distributed with Eclipse, and assume they are one in the same. But I digress.
I think your bullets need more background to fully understand them, but I'll take a shot. Let's take this point by point:
Your comments make me wonder which version of Eclipse and the JDT environment you last tried. In any case, if you're a VS .NET
developer then you may not be interested in the JDT anyway. Did you
know that there is a budding C/C++ IDE environment for Eclipse as
well (as well as for PHP and other languages)? Perhaps you were
referring to one of them?
While I do agree with your statement about lack of annoyances over features, my real purpose in an IDE is to make me more productive. If it doesn't do that, I'll use VIM or JEdit.
Greg T.
Just so that everyone knows:
c ko ut%7E/jdt-core-home/r3.0/main.html#updates
Concurrent with development of 3.0, and slated for a post-3.0 release, is a complete early preview of J2SE 1.5 support, codenamed "Cheetah", last release 2004/05/17.
http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/%7Eche
Instructions are there for downloading and maintaining the most recent version of Cheetah via the Eclipse Update Manager, which will install and update any installed version of this plugin once installed.
Currently supported include JCK 1.5 compliance, claiming, at the time of writing, 97.32% (271 test failures remain) compliancy; broad support for most of the generic types functionality (except covariance), and support for the enhanced for loops (but missing autoboxing, enumerations, static imports, metadata.)
It is unfinished; it won't make 3.0 release, but will hopefully reach feature completion around the time that JDK 1.5 is actually released.
-- A mind is a terrible thing.
The latest status report on the eclipse site as of 10am CDT says
Friday June 25, 2004 10:15 EDT Status: A rebuild of RC4 will happen at 12:00 EDT to include last-minute doc problems (only).
The release is due some time next week.