Eclipse 3.1 Released

Jeff Myers writes "Eclipse version 3.1 was just released and is available for download. There are quite a few new and noteworthy features added in this release - including full support for Java 5.0 and improved support for developing rich client applications based on the Eclipse platform." Update: 06/28 21:03 GMT by Z : Denis emailed to request we use mirrors, as they're already getting hammered pretty hard.

Comments

Coincidence!

[savagedome]

With the Space Ring and Google Earth, I knew the Eclipse was coming!

Re:Coincidence!

[VagaStorm]

What's the best thing about Eclipse?

With the javascript and php plugins it's manages to give me a great outline of my files, which do save me alot of time :D Aloot better than any other linux development enviorment I've ever tried :D

Re:Coincidence!

[AndrewR81]

Heh, on the topic of the name, it took months before the whole Eclipse - Java - Sun Microsystems thing clicked in for me. But apparently they weren't targeting Sun at all!

From Eclipse: Behind the Name:

"Our target was Microsoft," Nackman said. "Microsoft was clearly the market leader and was on a path to become the dominant tools platform. It was clear there'd be competition for developers... So around 1998 we felt, key to the competition around application servers and middleware, we needed to bring developers to Java-based middleware ... IBM's middleware business depended on bringing developers to our Java-based middleware."
[snip]
"But the name seems so perfect a knock against Sun. How could it not be? Well, according to a source, some of the early Eclipse originators had a retreat where one of the themes was the universe and many code names emerged involving celestial themes. Eclipse stuck. And while Sun was not necessarily the primary target, "these were really smart people, and I don't think the visualization and competitive implication was lost," a source said."

Mirror/Torrent anywhere?

[gcauthon]

Everything has already been overloaded at eclipse.org. TDS Internet used to be listed in their mirrors but now it isn't? Bailing out a little early aren't we?

Re:Mirror/Torrent anywhere?

[okock]

probably the subscribers, rushing and /.ing early...

Re:Mirror/Torrent anywhere?

[wiml]

Here ya go: Coral cache link to eclipse.org

Re:Mirror/Torrent anywhere?

[toofast]

We were beyond maxed out about 30 minutes after the build was pushed in. Five hours later (still maxed out) we got a Slashdot front page... Nice.

Re:Mirror/Torrent anywhere?

[ClamChwdrMan]

Set up a torrent next time, and promote using that. I know I would, even if it's slower initially.

Bad day for Eclipse Project...

[Ingolfke]

They release a new version of their software and their primary delivery servers in Pakistan are completely unavailable.

Re:Bad day for Eclipse Project...

[MisterLawyer]

Denis emailed to request we use mirrors, as they're already getting hammered pretty hard.

Hammers and mirrors... bad mix.

Re:Bad day for Eclipse Project...

[toofast]

Actually, I meant hammered as in drunk... But whatever works for you!

Just one question

[John Seminal]

Is Eclipse any faster than when they first released it.

That was my only knock of the software. It would be so slow. William. Shatner. could. deliver. a. line. quicker.

For those who don't need a full blown IDE, just something to write java in and compile, try textpad. It is lightning quick.

But I bet with faster CPU's, eclipse is alright now. But it was so slow on a PIII 1ghz with 512 megs. So slow.

Re:Just one question

[quantaman]

Is Eclipse any faster than when they first released it.

Yes.
The site is down at the moment so I don't have any links but I know they've done a lot of great work on performance, especially on linux, since 3.0. GUI operations are way faster and the whole app is way more responsive as a result.

Re:Just one question

[Mechanik]

Is Eclipse any faster than when they first released it.

Actually yes. Performance was a major focal point for 3.1. Now that all the platform plugins are using OSGI bundle manifests and are all packaged as JAR files, things are much faster. Just starting up Eclipse used to take forever but it's much faster now.

Re:Just one question

[frodo from middle ea]

It is quite fast now, but run it on a dual core P4 with 2.5 Gigs of RAM, now that's quite a highend configuration.

I always keep trying new IDEs, but within a day or two end up going back to Vim, but eclipse is the only thing that I would even consider replacing Vim with for my programming.

my problem is with their CVS integration, if you use SSH for cvs access, it puts the repository as ":extssh:..." , instead of ":ext:..." , and this makes the repository incompatible with anyother CVS tool.

I used eclipse for about 3-4 months, but again I am back to Vim, but 3-4 months is a long time, as no other IDE gets more than a day.

Re:Just one question

[okock]

It's huge, but reasonably quick on a non-ancient computer. Incremental compiler helps keeping the perceived performance up. Code completion, Refactoring support and quick fixes are way better than anybody using textpad, emacs or vi could ever imagine. Getting used to this makes you wonder how you could ever be productive without. Try IntelliJ Idea if you don't want to try eclipse (but idea is commercial).

I've had your experience with an older IBM Websphere Developer version, based on an older eclipse, but eclipse had a reasonably good performance since I first tried it. Keep in mind that it offers a lot more than just a text editor.

Re:Just one question

[Iffy Bonzoolie]

I have recently switched over to Eclipse from XEmacs for all my Java development. It is quite a memory hog (not that XEmacs isn't) but I've found it to be faster in general than XEmacs. If you open too many files it starts to get sluggish, which is sort of lame. But all of the refactoring, auto-formatting, auto-importing and such is pretty awesome. I can honestly say it saves me a lot of time.

Now NetBeans I tried a while back and THAT was absurdly slow. I uninstalled it within 30 minutes.

-If

Re:Just one question

[Metteyya]

It starts pretty long (sometimes 30 sec on my P3/Celeron 1.2GHz with 512 megs), but after it starts - it works wondefully, responsive as if it were a native (machine code) application.

Give it a try. Download, start, make yourself a cup of java and return to computer for some great Java development experience.

Re:Just one question

[John Seminal]

It is quite fast now, but run it on a dual core P4 with 2.5 Gigs of RAM, now that's quite a highend configuration.

For a system with 2.5 gigs, I expect you have more RAM than it needs. How much does Eclipse use up when you start it?

Re:Just one question

[chez69]

fedora core 4 has a natively compliled version of eclipse included.

Re:Just one question

[AndrewR81]

I've only used version 3 and it's quite fast. Admittedly I'm on a 3 GHz with 512 MB RAM. I've heard several people the same thing, so maybe 3.X is improved. Occasionally, it will stall for about 30 seconds but I've never had it crash.

I've found that developing in eclipse is faster than writing and compiling, because it highlights errors as you type (like how word underlines spelling mistakes). Once I'm done editing, I know it compiles, although just clicking the "run" icon is all that's required. (You can get a list of errors and go through them one by one if you prefer.)

I also find the development aids they have to be time-saving. For example, a ctrl-T will bring up a class hierarchy tree. Ctrl-E will pop up a list of all files opened where you can type in a filter (Action*.java). Ctrl-alt-H will show all the methods that call the method you'are currently editing. Not to mention the refactoring, debugger, views, etc.

Of course, each editor/IDE has their strength and weaknesses, but I've been quite happy with eclipse. The only thing I miss is a GUI editor like netbeans has.

Re:Just one question

[njcoder]

how lame, that doesn't even rhyme :)

Re:Just one question

[jnana]

my problem is with their CVS integration, if you use SSH for cvs access, it puts the repository as ":extssh:..." , instead of ":ext:..." , and this makes the repository incompatible with anyother CVS tool.

There has been an option of doing CVS in Eclipse using ext: and not extssh: for a long time. I've been doing it for more than a year. Extssh may be the default on some wizard though, but if you just add the repository location yourself, you can select 'ext:' and it works great.

Re:Just one question

[EvilJohn]

I found it faster, though I didn't time it. You're a little short on CPU, so you're going to get slow performance anyway, are probably just better off with a text editor to do the development.

It's worth noting that starting Eclipse for the first time takes 3 or 4 times longer to start than subsequent times.

Re:Just one question

[Necroman]

Eclipse eats a crazy amount of ram. With a project at work, I sit around 330 megs of memory used.

Re:Just one question

[jhouserizer]

How much does Eclipse use up when you start it? It of course depends on your projects, etc. but for me, I have 6 large projects nearly always open at the same time. I define "large" by 40+ packages, with 8-12 classes each, plus a hundred or more config and jsp/html files. With all of this "fired up" it uses ~110 MB of RAM, and is quite responsive on a crappy 1.7GHz Centrino processor.

Re:Just one question

[swilver]

Eclipse eats as much as you give it. I think it defaults to 256 MB ram, and given the chance it will fill that with cached lists of classes, methods, and so on in order to speed up search and overview functions.

Try starting it with -vmargs -Xmx128M

Re:Just one question

[Necroman]

I already have it starting off at 256 and going up to 700 something. The projects I work on are too large to fit withing 128 megs. People in my group get out of memory errors sometimes with the max VM size at 512 megs.

Re:Just one question

[gehel]

Well, i dont know exactly how much RAM Eclipse takes, but I work with Eclipse, MagicDraw and AndroMDA to develop Tomcat based J2EE apps. When everything is loaded (add to that firefox and postgres, ...) my 1Go RAM is full and half of my 2Go swap is taken ...
Still, the system is pretty reactive, except during compilation ...

Re:Just one question

[tolkienfan]

I've used Eclipse since it was first opened by IBM.

It was far faster and more responsive than any Swing app then, and it's better now, even given that it's much bigger and more feature rich.

Given 1ghz and 512Mb and you should be in good shape - on Linux.

Upgrade your ram to at least 1Gb if you're on XP.

And, textpad+javac won't let you be nearly as productive. Especially when, under Eclipse, Alt+S, and your java file is incrementally compiled. You don't even need to think about it.

On other thing: Eclipse does more than Java. I use CDT for C & C++. Still has kinks in it, but any developer should be able to be productive with it.

Re:Just one question

[Trejkaz]

Is it faster on Linux now as well as Windows? SWT on Linux has always been a real dog, and I'm keen for it to get faster because (a) it's the only thing stopping me using it over Swing, and (b) I run Azureus, which is amazingly slow because of it.

Re:Just one question

[msoori]

I didnt like Eclipse when I first tried it... I had been spoilt by CodeWarrior, and I hate GUIs that just arent quite snappy. But, I was coming to the end of the road with CodeWarrior for Java since they were discontinuing it, and eventually I started working with Eclipse since the rest of the team is using it. Eventhough Eclipse requires a highend PC, lots of memory and not as snappy and user friendly as CodeWarrior, I'm begining to get used to its niceties. CodeWarrior gives you much nicer way to navigate the src code, and has nice class diagrams, but dosent help you much with automating repetative tasks. Eclipse is much better at automating tasks. Hopefully 3.1 has much more improvements, and less bloat.

Re:Just one question

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Indeed. SWT on Linux plain sucks, partly because SWT/GTK+ is botched up, and partly because GTK+ is already pretty sluggish in the first place. Add up the two and you get a real disaster. I find Eclipse to be perfectly usable on a moderately fast machine on Windows, but with a similar computer under Linux the GUI is slow as mollasses. It's getting really ridiculous.

I really wish they'd bring back the Qt frontend for SWT. I don't give a living fuck about license conflicts, just give me a damn source-only release and I'll compile it myself!

Re:Just one question

[gus goose]

Of course, you could use eclipse .... see www.eclipse.org/ve/

gus

Re:Just one question

[owlstead]

Well, there is a reason they have automated tests on responsiveness right now. The SWT (Java widget toolkit using native widgets) software seems to have sped up quite a bit as well, so it should at least feel more responsive.

But enable the "mark occurences" option in the Preferences and see that a little less performance can be a pretty good trade-off. Don't compare it with non-parsing IDE's or text editors. If you do that, you do not understand one thing about this environment.

Anyway, it is pretty much configurable, so you can speed it up yourself. I type with 10 fingers all the time, and lags are pretty uncommon. Actually, that's the one most important thing. You can still just type source code, and use the enhanced functionality if you feel like it.

Re:Just one question

[Felonious Ham]

That's definitely one for bugzilla. As mentioned, it's happy to use as much ram as you give it, but out of memory errors is a bug. I've always found the team very responsive to any serious issue (want to have's can take a good long time).

Re:Just one question

[Trejkaz]

There is a bug open on the Eclipse tracker for Qt support. Every now and then I've been bugging them to see if they'd implement it, and I always wondered how many other people were bugging them. Obviously not enough. :-)

My suspicion is that it's not so much licencing issues, but that they haven't actually implemented it. It's not even in source control under the "qt" directory...

Re:Just one question

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Yes, it's a licensing issue. Read here.

Re:Just one question

[s100w]

It's faster since 3.0 for sure. I'm happy with it on a P4 2.8 at work. It crawls along on my PowerBook, but that's running at 400 mHz so what do you expect? Funny thing is, every time I go back to BBEdit and the command line, I don't last. The snappiness is great, but Eclipse's auto-complete, refactoring, and background compile make me faster overall.

Re:Just one question

[Trejkaz]

Whether Trolltech are "keen" or not, Qt being GPL doesn't prevent Eclipse releasing *source* for their binding. It only screws over people who want to *redistribute* Qt.

Re:Just one question

[Anonymous Coward]

Eclipse does have a GUI editor: get the Visual Editor plugin. It's not 100% complete yet, but it's close.

It also has tools for web development, modelling, testing, profiling, and all kinds of other stuff that aren't included by default, and tons of third-party addons.

Re:Just one question

[IntergalacticWalrus]

My original point exactly.

Re:Just one question

[Trejkaz]

So why bother replying when my comment mentioned source instead of binaries? There are no licencing issues with the source...

Re:Just one question

[Raven15]

This is closer to my experience too. I run Eclipse under linux on a 1.8GHz Athlon64 with 1GB RAM, and I regularly have 10-15 projects open with several hundred files. Startup time is good for me, on the order of 7-10 seconds. Normal operation is likewise very responsive.

Re:Just one question

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Yeah but the Eclipse devs don't seem to realize it. Or they just don't want to.

Re:Just one question

[AndrewR81]

Wow, I didn't know about that visual editor, thanks!

Speaking of plugins, there is a C++ plugin, but I found it difficult to set up. I still haven't been able to get some of the development aids to work (such as highlighting errors as you go along).

One plugin that is uber cool is "Creole". It visually lays out the stucture of your code, including method calls. And the navigation is really slick. There's a screenshot at http://www.thechiselgroup.org/creole but it doesn't do it justice.

Re:Just one question

[superpulpsicle]

Running elipse crashes most people's PCs. So far eclipse on fedora core 4 already have a bad reputation.

Re:Just one question

[Nightshade]

I've been using all the milestone and release candidates of the 3.1 series and 3.1RC4 is definitely much faster than 3.0.2.

Now if I could only download the final release of 3.1...

Re:Just one question

[miro2]

By far for me, the most awesome aspect of Eclipse is the code refactoring and auto-creating.

1. Highlight a block of code, and convert it to become a method. The method will automatically have the correct input variables (whatever variables are used in the block, but not created there), and a return variable (if a variable is created in the block and used after it)

2. Renaming of moving variables and classes.

3. Automatically creating try-catch blocks with the correct errors caught!

These save so much time and make coding so much more fluid than it would be otherwise.

Re:Just one question

[jurt1235]

Funny, if it would have been commercial software, you would have been moderated as flame bait

Re:Just one question

[G-funk]

I'm sure I'll get it for this in here, but eclipse is a big, slow, horribly monstrosity. Long live InjelliJ Idea!

Re:Just one question

[RiotNrrd]

I'm really glad to know that I'm not the only one that had issues with performance.

I thought that *I* was doing something wrong!

Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev things

[WillAffleckUW]

maybe include:

1. a short description of what it is [a better browser, a sliced bread device, a program for counting sheep]; and

2. a link to a resource page on what it is [like the basic description in detail for geeks] ...

Seriously, I haven't the faintest idea what Eclipse is - is it a device to crash the moon into the earth to make a [evil laugh] MILLION DOLLARS!!! - or is it the latest hamster-management software program for hamster farming?

ok, i'll be quiet ... but seriously, you only post a short two line post on something and no details and the frickin web site is /. already so who the heck knows what it is ...

Correct link

[kss]

The link gives a 404. Here is the correct one.

Re:Correct link

[fejikso]

and the corresponding Coralized link:

http://download.eclipse.org.nyud.net:8090/eclipse/ downloads/drops/R-3.1-200506271435/eclipse-news.ht ml

Torrent?

[slavemowgli]

No torrent?

Re:Torrent?

[infiniteedge]

http://play.aelitis.com/torrents/eclipse-SDK-3.1-w in32.zip.torrent

I didn't put it up, thank Nolar.

Eclipse is slow...

[everphilski]

I tried it about three weeks ago on suggestion from a friend. I'm starting my thesis work which involves modeling in C++, and I was looking for a free environment. On my box (Intel 2.0GHz, 1gig RAM) it ran pretty slow. Booted into Windows and D/L'ed the beta version of Microsoft Visual C++, it ran quicker :(
I'm not trolling, just answering the man's question. I wound up sticking with MSVC++.
-everphilski-

Re:Eclipse is slow...

[Anonymous Coward]

You tried using Eclipse for C++ development on Linux? You do realize Eclipse is a Java IDE, right? There are a lot more choices for doing C++ than the silly CDE plugin for Eclipse.

Re:Eclipse is slow...

[aled]

however nice Visual Studio is, I wonder how you program in Java with MS Visual C++...

Re:Eclipse is slow...

[owlstead]

Eclipse is much slower than MSV 6.0 and .NET 2003. This is because it is keeping the whole parse tree in memory and adds to it the moment you type. This means that it will check your syntax and even most of the semantics as you type. It knows about any identifier the moment you declare it, which makes programming that much easier. Only with 2005 beta is Microsoft introducing *some* of these features already found in the first Eclipse editions. Yes, the IDE is somewhat slower, but the functionality is much, much (much) more advanced. YOU get faster.

ps. use Java 5.0 for a fair comparison, it matters quite a bit, and don't forget to up the heap memory at startup.

Re:Eclipse is slow...

[Raven15]

Wrong, Eclipse is not a Java development tool. It's always been billed as a rich application platform. The Java IDE is the first and primary use for it, but the C Development Tools (CDT) have seen a lot of work lately.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[xbrownx]

I'm pretty sure that the "eclipse-news.html" link in the article would tell you all about Eclipse, if it wasn't currently slashdotted to all hell.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[shredluc]

In a nutshell, and with a bunch of holes - it's a IDE to create java programs. It's written in java.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[suitepotato]

From TFSite:
Eclipse.org is the website of the Eclipse Foundation.

Eclipse is an open platform for tool integration built by an open community of tool providers. Operating under an open source paradigm, with a common public license that provides royalty free source code and world wide redistribution rights, the eclipse platform provides tool developers with ultimate flexibility and control over their software technology.

Eclipse has formed an independent open eco-system around royalty-free technology and a universal platform for tools integration. Eclipse based tools give developers freedom of choice in a multi-language, multi-platform, multi-vendor environment. Eclipse provides a plug-in based framework that makes it easier to create, integrate and utilize software tools, saving time and money. By collaborating and exploiting core integration technology, tool producers can leverage platform reuse and concentrate on core competencies to create new development technology. The Eclipse Platform is written in the Java language and comes with extensive plug-in construction toolkits and examples. It has already been deployed on a range of development workstations including Linux, HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, QNX, Mac OS X and Windows based systems. A full description of the Eclipse community and white papers documenting the design and use of the Eclipse Platform are available at http://www.eclipse.org./

The Eclipse Foundation is a non-profit corporation formed to advance the creation, evolution, promotion, and support of the Eclipse Platform and to cultivate both an open source community and an ecosystem of complementary products, capabilities, and services.

Seems simple enough to me. They're a non-profit market-speak-driven company that wants to be a cross-platform coding development environment company.

My money is on market-speak winning. I mean, anyone that can write "independent open eco-system around royalty-free technology and a universal platform for tools integration" is much better suited to that than Java. Maybe marketing Java...

You call that a release ?

[DrStrangeLug]

We were using it where I worked and discovered upon upgrading to 3.1 RC3 that our app wouldn't compile. It still doesn't on this release. Backup your old copy before you upgrade.

Re:You call that a release ?

[Pac]

Java 1.5 issues or some other bug in the IDE? Netbeans has the former nailed down pretty neatly.

Re:You call that a release ?

[quantaman]

We were using it where I worked and discovered upon upgrading to 3.1 RC3 that our app wouldn't compile. It still doesn't on this release. Backup your old copy before you upgrade.

Can you be more specific as to why it wouldn't compile?

If your app is a plugin there may have been some interface changes which might break code relying on old interfaces, I suspect not but it's possible, especially if your code reaches into the eclipse internals (which it shouldn't).

If your code isn't a plugin but some other app then maybe you could give a more verbose explaination of what kind of errors you're getting that your app is not compiling?

Re:You call that a release ?

[Drakonian]

Heh heh.

Eclipse is the Teh Suck because it doesn't compile my L337 app. You call that a release? Is it *possible* that the problem may be with your app?

Re:You call that a release ?

[owlstead]

Yeah, my firefox has crashed a few times as well since I started to use it. It's still a great program. My source code? That's safely within my CVS and SourceSafe (yeah, I know) versioning servers.

All this said, I do recommend exporting/copying your Eclipse projects before upgrading as you recommend. Setting up your build path can be quite some work. Most of the time I do copy the old workspace from one version of Eclipse to the other. Note that you NEED to do this when upgrading to/from non-stable versions at all times anyway.

So good advise, but please be more specific as to the cause of these defects.

Re:You call that a release ?

[michaelggreer]

Why would you upgrade your workplace computers to a pre-release version of essential software? Complain about the release, not the candidates. Submit bugs on candidates.

Re:You call that a release ?

[mabinogi]

Eclipse includes its own incremental compiler.
You never have to do a separate "build" step for most Java projects, just save the file and run the app.

Re:You call that a release ?

[DrStrangeLug]

Just to clarify, I'm not some 14-18 yr old script kiddie here. I'm 33 and working in a professional dev team. We had a working app on 3.1M7 , RC2 and then it broke on RC3 and the release and we had to backtrack. (At least, those of us in the office silly enough to use bleeding edge for production work.

Secondly, I'm not willing to post code examples because I've only been with the company 5 weeks and don't really want to risk my job and thus mortgage payments.

Thirdly, it's not a L337 app, it's actually a rather boring app. But the bit's I've coded (which do compile BTW) are rather l337 if I do say so myself.

Mirrors...

[xbrownx]

..who has them?

Million download challenge!

[Reverend528]

Wow, it seems that eclipse has jumped on the "million download challenge" bandwagon. Though, this one is a bit less interesting as no one has to swim across the ocean...

Re:Million download challenge!

[Anonymous Coward]

If it reaches a million downloads, I say we all find Erich Gamma and toss him into the ocean.

What eclipse is

[acomj]

Eclipse is confusing.. its really 2 things in 1.

1. Its an Itergrated Development Environment (IDE) which allows plug ins to extend its usefullyness.

2. Its written in java with SWT (native platorm windowing extentions). It can be used as a framework for building your own java applications.

Re:What eclipse is

[WillAffleckUW]

thanks for the explanation. After I found another developer who had heard of it - just barely - but couldn't remember what it did - your explanation that Eclipse is a Free, Open Source, Integrated Development Environment (IDE) which allows plug-ins to extend it's usefullness and is written in Java with SWT for multi-OS usage - well, it's very helpful.

Much thanks. It just popped up on top of /. and I went ... um ... what IS this ...

After all, my Perl script was running in background updating the database anyway.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[ArsonSmith]

So what the heck is an IDE? you give this explination but don't explain these advanced terms.

On that what is Java? "It's written in java?" does that have something to do with coffee?

Re:Come to think of it...

[scottbell]

Are you thinking of JEdit? http://www.jedit.org/>

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[Metteyya]

Man, you read and post on Slashdot and don't know what Eclipse is? If so, you didn't write even a "Hello World" in Java, did you?

Eclipse is an IDE. Primarly for Java, but it's plugin system makes it - with proper plugins - great for developing C/C++, PHP, Ruby and even synching with darcs repo!

Re:Come to think of it...

[sita]

I never could use either of them because I did not have a good enough system (PIII 1ghz with 512 megs).

You have some other problem. I have a slightly weaker notebook (0,85 GHz, 0,5 Gb), and Eclipse runs nicely.

maybe you're thinking of jEdit

[Anonymous Coward]

jEdit allows you to include what you need and leave out anything you don't use with its extensive plug-in architecture...

jEdit

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[hey]

Slashdot just wouldn't be Slashdot with boring/sane stuff like that in there!

How about this: a new version of Apache [a http [http is the the web protocol] server [a program [an ordered set of instructions] that runs all the time] was just released.

Re:Come to think of it...

[Metteyya]

Try out Eclipse now. You'll have to wait for it to start (I wait approx. 30 sec on my P3/Cel 1.2Ghz with 512), but after it starts, it's very responsive and snappy.

No

[Pac]

It is for Devs, as you say. If you don't know what it is, we don't know you, you don't belong...

Re:No

[WillAffleckUW]

It is for Devs, as you say. If you don't know what it is, we don't know you, you don't belong...

Hey, I've got four /. accounts - one has a user id with four digits.

Geesh, just like high school. I thought we gave up on that back sometime after I got my third degree.

Re:No

[John Jorsett]

It is for Devs, as you say. If you don't know what it is, we don't know you, you don't belong...

So Dev knowledge is innate, not learned? Interesting theory ...

Re:That's nice. Now I'm clueless.

[suitepotato]

It's a breath freshening bubblegum, a natural celestial event causing awe and fear in primitive hominids of a backwater planet, and a brand of car from a small nation on the west side of a nice ocean on aforementioned backwater planet.

It's also some sort of Java IDE with better marketing description than stability according to what I keep reading.

Re:Real World C++ Dev With Eclipse?

[chez69]

check out this FC4 has it included, and it's pretty nice.

mirror list

[thedude13]

note that not all of the mirrors are updated yet

http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/softeng/eclipse/R-3.1-20050 6271435/
http://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/eclip se/R-3.1-200506271435/
http://eclipse.gabriel.co.hu/downloads/drops/R-3.1 -200506271435/
http://www.eclipse.ps.pl/downloads/drops/R-3.1-200 506271435/
http://mirrors.bevc.net/eclipse/download/drops/R-3 .1-200506271435/
http://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/eclipse/downloads/d rops/R-3.1-200506271435/
http://mirrors.cs.hacettepe.edu.tr/eclipse.org/ecl ipse/downloads/drops/R-3.1-200506271435/
http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca/pub/appl/eclipse/eclip se/downloads/drops/R-3.1-200506271435/
http://mirror.reachable.ca/eclipse/downloads/drops /R-3.1-200506271435/
http://mirror.calvin.edu/eclipse/downloads/drops/R -3.1-200506271435/
http://ftp.sun.ac.za/ftp/mirrorsites/eclipse/eclip se/downloads/drops/R-3.1-200506271435/

Re: mirror list

[Quince alPillan]

And of those, the ones that are updated as of now...

• http://eclipse.gabriel.co.hu/downloads/drops/R-3.1 -200506271435/
• http://mirror.reachable.ca/eclipse/downloads/drops /R-3.1-200506271435/
• http://ftp.sun.ac.za/ftp/mirrorsites/eclipse/eclip se/downloads/drops/R-3.1-200506271435/

Re: mirror list

[Jherico]

None of these mirrors is actually up to date. The most frustrating part is that the reachable.ca one has the most files of any of them, and has the main SDK download, but only for aix, hpux, gtk-ppc, and gtk-x86_64. I imagine that 95% of people are waiting for the carbon, win32, and gtk-x85 versions. Its like the site is mocking us.

Re: mirror list

[daserver]

Good it wasn't just me. I even downloaded the RCP version only to found out that it was not the version I needed ;-)

Re:mirror list

[natet]

I'd like to recommend a couple of things to the Eclipse project folks...

1. Don't announce the latest and greatest version of your project until all your mirrors are up to date and have said version. It's just annoying to start clicking on links, only to get a 404 error.

2. Please list the mirror sites somewhere prominantly on your site, and don't make us go through some dynamic scripting just to go to a mirror site to get the software. When I did finally get to a list of mirror sites, the links were completely useless because I had to go through your massively overburdened servers to access them. I started copying the link url and copying out the real url to the mirror site (of course, none of the mirrors I tried actually had the drop, so that was pointless).

Re:mirror list

[ManxStef]

For the Mac OS X version (eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbon.tar.gz):

[Austria] Vienna University of Technology
http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/softeng/eclipse/R-3.1-20050 6271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbon.tar.gz

[Canada] Groupe d'utilisateurs de Linux de l'UdeS
http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca/pub/appl/eclipse/eclip se/downloads/drops/R-3.1-200506271435/eclipse-SDK- 3.1-macosx-carbon.tar.gz

[France] ObjectWeb Consortium (INRIA - French National Inst
http://eclipse.objectweb.org/downloads/drops/R-3.1 -200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbon.tar.gz

[Germany] University of Applied Sciences Esslingen
http://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/eclip se/R-3.1-200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbo n.tar.gz

[Hungary] Gabriel Consulting
http://eclipse.gabriel.co.hu/downloads/drops/R-3.1 -200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbon.tar.gz

[Slovenia] bevc.net
http://mirrors.bevc.net/eclipse/download/drops/R-3 .1-200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbon.tar. gz

[Switzerland] SWITCHmirror
http://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/eclipse/downloads/d rops/R-3.1-200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-car bon.tar.gz

[Turkey] Hacettepe University, Department of Computer Science & Engineering
http://mirrors.cs.hacettepe.edu.tr/eclipse.org/ecl ipse/downloads/drops/R-3.1-200506271435/eclipse-SD K-3.1-macosx-carbon.tar.gz

[United Kingdom] UK Mirror Service
http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/download.eclips e.org/R-3.1-200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-ca rbon.tar.gz

[United States] Calvin College
http://mirror.calvin.edu/eclipse/downloads/drops/R -3.1-200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbon.ta r.gz

[United States] Calvin College (ftp)
ftp://mirror.calvin.edu/eclipse/downloads/drops/R- 3.1-200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbon.tar .gz

Unfortunately as of 2005-06-29 02:26:39 BST none are updated yet, hopefully all the rsync mirroring cronjobs'll complete soon!

Re:mirror list

[Anonymous Coward]

Your first point is not the fault of the Eclipse folks - they didn't let the cat out of the bag. When the story was posted on Slashdot nothing was posted yet on the Eclipse site about the 3.1 release. There isn't much the Eclipse folks can do if people make posts such as this story before all the mirrors get synched up.

Re:mirror list

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd also recommend that Apple developers running Tiger get the latest J2SE 5.0 Release 1 here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301 073

and check out Apple's handy Java Reference Library here:
http://developer.apple.com/referencelibrary/Java/

There's also a FAQ on Java under OS X here:
http://developer.apple.com/java/faq/

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[aliens]

mmmmm darcs. Needs better subversion and IIRC the PHP plugin doesn't work with 3.1. At least it didn't up till last week.

Re:Stupid "features"

[Albinofrenchy]

Some features of java that should compile wouldn't. Generics are a good example. If this was relevant to you, you would know that. Since you don't, I'm thinking you are just complaining to complain.

Rubbish

[panurge]

I'm sorry, this is almost a troll. A decent PIII 1GHz with 512Mbytes could run Netbeans quite effectively. In fact, I used to run Netbeans away from the office with a thin and light notebook PC (700MHz ulv PIII, 320Mbytes) and it was able to run a project which included a moderate sized servlet project and a desktop Swing client. The only thing that was slow was the Swing designer, and it was liveable with.
OK, both Eclipse & NB are pretty fast on an AMD64 box with a G of RAM- but actually my current lightweight, relatively slow PIIIM on which I'm typing this is quite adequate - and it's only at that same 1GHz/512Mbytes, with a slow HDD.

Mirror, Great Idea!

[Bob9113]

Denis emailed to request we use mirrors, as they're already getting hammered pretty hard.

I think it's very kind of you to edit the story to suggest that we go to the mirrors instead of to the main site. Did Denis, I dunno, maybe, provide links? If so, any possiblity you'd be willing to share the info?

Re:Mirror, Great Idea!

[toofast]

When you click your download file from www.eclipse.org, it will ask you to pick a mirror. Unfortunately many of them haven't sync'ed yet, so many people just zip down the page and pick "Main Eclipse Download Site". That's what I wanted to avoid.

Re:Stupid "features"

[orasio]

"improved support for developing rich client applications based on the Eclipse platform",
that is a feature.

It means that you can make better standalone programs, based on the Eclipse framework.

Java 5.0 support means that it will run faster, and help you make programs faster, that run faster, too, in a nutshell.

Netbeans a lot nicer for debugging though

[SuperKendall]

The thing I like about NetBeans is that you can be up and deubgging a remote VM in under a minute. You mount a source directory, and bam you can debug whatever and follow the source.

With Eclipse (and many other IDE's) you have to have all the libraries and everythig else the app needs to compile in place before you can debug.

Of course less casual users of IDE's will not mind since they must already maintain the eclipse project file anyway to use it day to day. But for those of use who still prefer more powerful text editors it's one block to using it with regularity.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[shredluc]

Hey, I said it was full of holes.

(looking at your low UID, I really don't think you need an explanation though... ) :) Cheers!!

Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[WillAffleckUW]

Man, you read and post on Slashdot and don't know what Eclipse is? If so, you didn't write even a "Hello World" in Java, did you?

I use JBuilder and other Java tools. I've never even heard about Eclipse. I do know what JWT is, Swing, Java Beans - but I've never heard about Eclipse until today.

I've got a Sun Java backpack I wear to work, and training in various languages including formal university, college, and industry classes on Java.

And - I've - never - heard - of - Eclipse.

So if you're going to post a /. article about Eclipse that barely covers 1 1/2 lines on my screen, you could at least have a short description like:

"Eclipse, the combo IDE/toolset for Java, has just come out with their latest 3.1 release [link], which has some really cool features [link]. The best new features are Hamster Juggling, Applied Hamster Subclassing, Hamster Pseudo-Encrypted Sunflower-Swapping, and an improved Hamster-to-Gnome toolkit."

See, now that actually tells you enough that you can decide if you want to read it and if you're interested in the new and/or fixed features. Oh, and if it's Open Source, say so.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[Metteyya]

OK, that's a matter of quality of /. summaries.

It's still hard for me to believe in someone so professional in Java and not knowing what Eclipse is. It's like, where have You been for the last 5 years?
Never heard of SWT either? Do you know Azureus, the best BitTorrent client out there? It's written in Java using SWT toolkit for visualization - and SWT was developed for Eclipse. And yes, it's in many ways better (although harder) than Swing.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[The Mayor]

Man, you are a Java developer and you've never heard of Eclipse? Where have you been hiding? Let me guess--you've never heard of SWT, either?

If you are a Java developer and you haven't heard of eclipse, download it. It's the open-source IDE originally from IBM. It seems to be the IDE with the most traction in the Java world. IIRC, even Borland and BEA have decided the next versions of their respective IDEs (JBuilder and Workspace) will be simple plugins to Eclipse.

It's quite a nice IDE. Really. There's a ton of useful plugins for it, too. I'm not so sure it's any better, technically, than NetBeans, but it sure has a critical mass of 3rd party support.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[WillAffleckUW]

Do you know Azureus, the best BitTorrent client out there?

No, but if you post something about Azureus, maybe when you do you could say:

"Azureus, the best BitTorrent client, has come out with a new release [link] which has these mirrors [links]. The new release fixes the USDOJ-Worm bug [links to bugfix] and adds the new ManyFilesToManyPeople BitTorrent protocol able to operate even when the .PK net cable is down thru wireless links."

Or something like that. If it's on Dev, at least describe it, and give more than one link.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[WillAffleckUW]

If you are a Java developer and you haven't heard of eclipse, download it. It's the open-source IDE originally from IBM. It seems to be the IDE with the most traction in the Java world. IIRC, even Borland and BEA have decided the next versions of their respective IDEs (JBuilder and Workspace) will be simple plugins to Eclipse.

Well now, see, that's what I mean.

When you post you could say something like:

Eclipse, the Open Source and Free IDE/toolkit [link to main page/faq], has come out with their latest version 3.1 available for download [link] and also at these mirror sites [links]. The new 3.1 release fixes the InsertPuppy bugs [link] and adds new features for PuppyTraining [link] and LeashControl [link].

Think. Consider your audience. Then post.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[rhedin]

well, since you're using JBuilder from Borland, why not just ask Borland-- a member of the Eclipse Foundation and who has already announced that the next version of JBuilder will be based on Eclipse?

see: Borland Announces JBuilder® Product Roadmap, New Eclipse-Based Collaborative Developer Environment
and Borland to Ring In New Era of Java(TM) Innovation at JavaOne

rob

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[dubious9]

"Think. Consider your audience. Then post."

While I agree with your main point somewhat, that you should include a short intro "what-is-it" blurb on non-trivial stuff, I'll have to disagree from there.

I don't believe you
1. Are a serious/competant Java developer
2. Have more than a year's Java development (non-classroom) experience
3. that you really work in java and are maybe a college student

How can you have never have heard of Eclipse? As any developer you should always be evaluating the best tools. Guess what a 'java ide' google search returns as it's number 1 result? In your experience researching solutions or problems in newgroups, mailing lists, IRC (ie #java @ freeenode) etc. etc. you've **never** heard of eclipse? That's like knowing and running linux and never ever hearing about debian.

But seriously man, you need to get yourself out there and looking for the best solution, wether that be Apache Commons libs for your software, jUnit for unit testing, or ant for build configuration. You should **always** know what your peers are using even though you may not like the product.

I know many developers that don't like Eclipse because of a variety of reasons, but I've never, ever, even heard of somebody who didn't hear of eclipse for years. I'm not trying to insult you or anything, but seriously man get your head out there.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[WillAffleckUW]

for all I know I heard of problems with Eclipse and derezzed it from my RAM.

I tend to work on the middle tier and with genomics databases - and my toolsets are partially constrained by the other things I need to get my job done. Heck, I don't even know Parrot and I use Perl every day - a lot.

Again, if you need to post something on Dev, consider the audience and don't just have one link.

It's like a table - if it only has one entry in it, it's kind of useless.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[WillAffleckUW]

If you are a Java developer and you haven't heard of eclipse, download it. It's the open-source IDE originally from IBM. It seems to be the IDE with the most traction in the Java world. IIRC, even Borland and BEA have decided the next versions of their respective IDEs (JBuilder and Workspace) will be simple plugins to Eclipse.

dated June 21, 2005 - the press releases above.

So, you presume I'd know about it when it's still June. I get a lot of press releases for cruft that isn't very useful each and every day.

As someone said, they couldn't even get the 3.1 release to compile. Maybe I'll wait for 3.2 ...

But it puzzles me that in the main post not a single person mentioned that it's:

A. FREE

B. Open Source

C. A better description of what it does.

I see a lot of PR spin on /. for non-open-source and non-free cruft that I'm just a bit cynical about things.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[snorklewacker]

This is not a java blog. The fact remains that there should be a minimum of effort, such as a phrase like "Eclipse, the Open Source Java IDE ..."

Really, it's just basic journalism. Something slashdot clearly knows absolutely bupkus about.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[Jherico]

If you can get to slashdot, you can probably get to wikipedia. If you're using a recent version of firefox all you have to do is type 'wp eclipse' in the location bar. Granted you have to go to the disambiguation page to find this particular eclipse (since as far as I know no one versions actual astronomical events), but I prefer a nice trim summary on the front page. If you don't know what eclipse is you can find out with minimal extra effort.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[rhedin]

well, actually...

Since you said that you'd never heard of Eclipse, I thought you might be interested to know that your tool of choice was migrating there. I would expect someone who (presumably) programs professionally and uses a given tool to know about that tool and the industry as a whole. For example: at JavaOne this week the following sessions are about or include information on Eclipse:
Smarter Rich Client Through Middleware Services
Building Your Own Eclipse Plug-Ins
Introduction to Eclipse's Rich Client Platform
Write Once, Plug Everywhere: Extending the Major Java IDEs -- NetBeans(TM), Eclipse, and JBuilder
What's New in Eclipse? A Java(TM) Technology IDE and a Whole Lot More
Runtime Aspects With JVM(TM) Support
Java(TM) EE Ease of Development: Platform Specification and Tools Perspective
Introduction to the Web Tools Platform Project

And, just for a point of order, the press release where Borland announced they were migrating to eclipse was dated May of 2005-- the JavaOne release from June was talking about Together integration with Eclipse.

rob.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[WillAffleck]

well, we're still using version 9 of JBuilder, as the rest of the team is running the older SDK and our Java 1.5 code release isn't until July.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[Tim Browse]

Seriously, give it up. If you ever complain about a slashdot story because you haven't got a clue what it's about, even though it's in your area, there are a million and one people here who will claim it's obvious and you are an idiot for not knowing about it. Even if adding a few words to the summary would make it 10 times more obvious.

I heard about Eclipse a year or two ago from a friend who was telling me about its extensibility, etc. If I hadn't had that conversation I probably wouldn't know about it either.

In short, don't waste the effort. They're like the guys who don't comment their code because they can remember how it all works.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[batkiwi]

Well, it's in both the "java" and "development" sections, but I could see how you might have thought it had nothing to do with either.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[shadow0_0]

You will be surprised. I have been interviewing several persons recently. None of them use or know what Eclipse is.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[dubious9]

I am surprised. Am I being unreasonable in that everybody java should know of Eclipse?

Or it is just a statement about developers today?

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[snorklewacker]

The logo for the article is IBM -- despite the fact that IBM isn't the only player when it comes to Eclipse (albeit the biggest one). Besides, many people promote everything they can to the front page. Even though it's obvious to me what Eclipse is (having used it off and on, this isn't a Java blog, as I've mentioned before, and a two or three word blurb actually describing the focus of the article is still basic and simple journalism.

A little pride in the work, that's what I look in vain for. Newsforge appears to have it, along with a front page that isn't full of round teal widgets butting up against square widgets on the left on a page that's 95% italic, sprinkled with icons with garish drop shadows. Not enough pride to update the look after more than five years I guess

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[batkiwi]

Ahhh, looking for pride in work. Why are you visiting slashdot, then?

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[ericspinder]

Really, it's just basic journalism. Something slashdot clearly knows absolutely bupkus about.

Please explain that term, I am unfamilar with 'bupkus', but perhaps that is some kinda of standard journalistic term. Do you also complain about lack of explanation for "Linux, the Open Source OS (OS of course meaning Operating System)link", "Apache the Open Source community, (and Web Server depending on the context)link." Perhaps we should also always say "FTC federal trade commision, an agency of the United States federal government (link)".

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[Arthur Dent]

You use JBuilder and had never heard of Eclipse?

Funny, I recall something about JBuilder moving to Eclipse...

Borland has announced their technical roadmap for JBuilder. Later this year Borland will ship JBuilder 2006 which will add shared code and shared debugging features. In the first half of 2006, JBuilder will ship a new version, code-named "Peloton", which will be completely Eclipse-based and add better dependency analysis features.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[d34thm0nk3y]

How can you have never have heard of Eclipse? As any developer you should always be evaluating the best tools. Guess what a 'java ide' google search returns as it's number 1 result?

That is of course, if he wanted to use an IDE in the first place. I personally HATE them and avoid them like the plague. Give me a simple editor with syntax/keyword highlighting at the most. That is a completely personal preference however, but not following every IDE on the planet (or even the most popular) says NOTHING about experiece or coding skills.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[WillAffleckUW]

someone else mentioned that - sorry, I don't read in detail every single email I get, or grok the implications of.

but thanks for mentioning it.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[dubious9]

I have nothing but respect for people who code in xemacs or vi or whatever non-IDE they want to use. Hell, I did it for a year in vi because I had to develop on remote unix platforms where taking even 50% cpu and ram was out of the question. And I liked it.

However, as an IDE guy I do know and have tried most of the non-IDE methods out there, as well as most of the freely available IDEs. I like to try to know what is popular to use agmounst my fellow developers. That way I can evalute products, take best practices, understand new developement paradyms and processes, etc.

In a profession that changes so quickly, how can you afford not to be constantly looking for the best way to do your job? Like I said, you may be fine with vi. You may not want to try Eclipse for any number of perfectly valid reasons. But to not even have *heard* of it?

For instance, I've never used emacs (and personally don't really like it) for any length of time, but I've *heard* of it, and know what it's good for. Therefore when a situation arrives in the future, I'll be better able to choose the right tool for the job.

But a java developer who as never even heard of a very popular developement evironment? I'm not so sure I'd take them as very experienced or have stellar coding skills. It's an indicator. ie If they haven't heard of eclipse, what else don't they know? I've seen these kind of people back in college and they wind up doing things like reimplementing basic API.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

firefox all you have to do is type 'wp eclipse'

You keep using that command. I do not think it means, what you think it means.

Using Firefox 1.0.4, if I type 'wp eclipse' into the location bar, I end up at this page: http://overholt.ca/wp/index.php?p=11 ... not the Wikipedia page like you seem to think.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[shadow0_0]

I think there are a few factors:
1. If the company is using a paid for IDE, it is unlikely to change. This is especially true in a large company.
2. If you are relatively happy with the IDE you are using, you will not go and look for a new one.
3. There is usually not enough time to keep up to date with stuff.

The only reason that I am aware of Eclipse is because a collegue brought my attention of it, and the only reason I follow its development is because we are all using it now. I certainly cannot tell you what JDeveloper or NetBean is up to.

Re:Is it just me, or why not explain it better?

[Evil Pete]

As Java becomes more and more popular you get developers who know jack shit taking it up. I talked to one the other day, nice guy, intelligent. He didn't know what design patterns were and he was a Java developer. Holly f**k! He didn't know about Netbeans and he didn't know about Eclipse. Unbelievable. I'm sure some of these people have never visited Javasoft or been to the Java Lobby sites. He was a *recent* graduate, and he had never touched any C. The mind boggles.

Re:Come to think of it...

[nb caffeine]

I use a free program called jcreator. Works well enough for me, as i couldnt stand the slowness with previous versions of eclipse. I doubt ill change, because the interface is relatively uncluttered (and you dont HAVE to have a project setup, i, for some reason, dont jive well with the idea of projects)

Eclipse rocks

[eplur]

I have been using eclipse for over 3 years to develop J2EE and web apps. It works better and faster than any other IDE I have used in the past.

Re:Eclipse rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good, but I preferred VisualAge for Java. That's so fast on modern machines. It's a shame that it can't be updated for Java 1.3/1.4/1.5 ...

Re:Eclipse rocks

[pico303]

Try IntelliJ Idea. You get what you pay for.

Re:Come to think of it...

[WillAffleckUW]

Back in the day when I was looking at IDE's, there was not that much choice (for free ones).

Ah - so it's FREE.

Would be nice if someone mentioned that in the main post - kind of useful to know.

Oh, I use UltraEdit 32 - it ain't free, but it's fairly inexpensive, and you can buy two copies for less than $30 if you're at an educational institution.

It's way better than textpad and it groks Perl and C and other langs.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[darkwhite]

You seem to have been living under a rock for the past couple of years.

Eclipse is the number one IDE for development in Java. IBM has been developing it for the past 5 years, and recently dozens of companies have jumped on the bandwagon, with the end result that pretty much every major Java developer tools company now has plugins for Eclipse.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[Scaba]

He meant it was written on java...lots of java. That's how they release those milestone builds on time.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[Anonymous Coward]

Face it...you never heard of it because you're an idiot...especially if you claim to work in Java...either you are lying, about working in Java, or you are an idiot who fails to keep up with what he works with...Eclipse isn't new...

I sense a disturbance in the force....

[ZosX]

As if a million souls cried out "worst. joke. evah!"

Kaffe

[ewhac]

Does it work with Kaffe 1.1.5 out of the box? Or do I still have to disable file locking by hand (osgi.locking=none)?

Schwab

Second

[Pac]

It looks very trollish - I used Netbeans for a while in a PIII 800 with 256MB. Not my best experience but usable (if you don't mind going for a coffee every now and then while the Garbage Collector does its thing). With my current P4/512 NB 4.1 runs just fine under XP.

Huh?

[gbulmash]

From their description: By collaborating and exploiting core integration technology, tool producers can leverage platform reuse and concentrate on core competencies to create new development technology.

Add: "And only then can the proletariat ensure its glorious future" and it sounds like something from a Soviet pamphlet ca. 1923.

Or maybe it sounds like a man from the future describing the Utopia to come in a bad 1950s B movie.

Actually, it's probably just missing some confusing acronyms. :-)

I guess this is really cool stuff for Java coders. But for the rest of us infidels, it's Stonehenge. It's big and impressive, but if you're not a druid, you're not really sure what it does.

- Greg

Re:Huh?

[gbulmash]

Before anyone beats me to it...

Stonehenge is the only surviving member of the famous druidic henges after Hayhenge and Stickhenge were blown down by a wolf.

Spamhenge is under construction.

- Greg

Re:Huh?

[James Youngman]

I guess this is really cool stuff for Java coders. But for the rest of us infidels, it's Stonehenge.

It supports C++ too.

Re:Huh?

[tolkienfan]

Eclipse is a shell IDE. Shell as in framework or platform.
The idea is that all the languages, tools and environments it supports are achieved by plugins.
A plugin for C/C++, a plugin for HTML, a plugin for Java (supplied).

The best part is that the user interface remains standardized across all the plugins. So there's a very short learning curve for each new tool.

Many vendors are supporting Eclipse now - I used to use Slickedit, sure enough there's a Slickedit plugin.

And it's completely open source.

Re:Huh?

[snorklewacker]

Actually, you're about half right. Just down the road from Stonehenge is Woodhenge (no link, JFGI). Or what's left of it anyway, which is basically just a bunch of holes with some petrified wood traces in 'em. Stone's the way to go for serious druids.

Re:Huh?

[matria]

There are plugins for just about any language/programming task that you can imagine; there is even a plugin with games. I use the php and html/css/javascript plugins for web development.

Re:Real World C++ Dev With Eclipse?

[Sorine]

I have used it for both Java web apps and embedded Linux applications. And I used straight Eclipse JDT and CDT, not a purchased plug-in. I like it a lot, but the CDT is a bit behind the JDT. I use it to develop in Linux and (if you're looking for an IDE) it's one of the best available for Linux. Another benefit is that some people on my team that worked on the web app used Windows. We both could use the OS we wanted and the same IDE. Sharing project directories and such was a breeze (same with CVS).

MOC

[RPoet]

How is this flamebait? I had a hard time getting eclipse 3.0 working on kaffe a while back myself due to the file locking issue (got great help from #kaffe though), I'd like to know if this has changed.

Eclipse?

[Txiasaeia]

For those of us not in the know and who might possibly be interested in this application, would it be possible from now on for submitters to include a brief description of what the program actually does, and maybe what OSes you can use it on? I think this is fair considering anytime I want to R the FA it's already been pounded into glue by the slashdot hordes.

Re:Eclipse?

[the0ther]

It's a reasonable expectation to know what Eclipse is.

Re:Eclipse?

[Txiasaeia]

Reasonable for who? I'm not a programmer (I gave up and googled it) and therefore wouldn't have come across the term in the course of my everyday life. It's "News for Nerds," not "News for Programmers." Anyway, would it really be so difficult to include a brief description of what the program does? We're talking about *one sentence*, not a doctoral dissertation.

Re:Eclipse?

[Txiasaeia]

To forestall my getting modded down, it's probably my fault that I even saw this story; I thought it was a general story when it appears that it belongs in the "Developers" sub-category. I'm obviously not a developer, and from your comment I would assume that anybody who *is* a developer would know what Eclipse is. My bad.

Re:Eclipse?

[WillAffleckUW]

For those of us not in the know and who might possibly be interested in this application, would it be possible from now on for submitters to include a brief description of what the program actually does, and maybe what OSes you can use it on? I think this is fair considering anytime I want to R the FA it's already been pounded into glue by the slashdot hordes.

I tried asking a question like that and people started calling me names.

Glad I'm not the only person - I just checked with two other developers here in the research labs - both have PhD's - and one said "oh, yeah, I think I heard of a group over in Wisconsin that used it and then ditched it".

So you're not alone in asking this - what to me appears to be - reasonable question.

I'd also like it if people would - even if it's obvious to them - post such useful information as the fact that - so I have found out eventually - Eclipse is apparently a FREE and OPEN SOURCE program.

Sometimes people go on vacation. Sometimes they wait until it's bug free. Sometimes they see a feature list and don't see a reason to move yet.

But if a submitter knew that it was a Free, Open Source, multi-OS IDE and toolkit that did X, Y, and Z - they might check it out.

Which is the point of posting it on Dev, if you ask me.

Re:Eclipse?

[mclaincausey]

If you don't know what it is, then it's a non-story for you. I'd move on. Most nerds know how to use Google...

Re:Eclipse?

[puppetman]

Programmers are nerds, and I'd bet most people on this site are aware of what Eclipse is.

It's a phenomenal IDE, capable of doing stuff that Visual C++ users are envious of. The configuration is a bit of a beast, however.

Intellij is also a very good IDE, but not free as in not-free-beer.

Re:Eclipse?

[Txiasaeia]

There have occasionally been extremely interesting apps showcased on Slashdot that I wouldn't have given a second look had I not taken the time to figure out what they actually did. All I'm asking for is one sentence explaining what it does and what platforms it's available on. That's it.

I never quite understood SWT

[Pac]

I couldn't really see the need for a third widget toolkit (AWT, Swing, SWT) specially after Sun got some sense and started using the community process to discuss and enhance Java. It always sounded to me like an IBMish NIH attack.

Another reason I never used it for more than a week was the fact Eclipse failed to supply a decent integrated GUI editor (hell, since VB showed the way back in the 90's, one of the most important points in an IDE is the GUI editor) - you had either to pay for a decent one or use some buggy and poorly integrated hack. Do they have something usable now?

So, I guess I must keep feeding more memory to my Netbeans at each upgrade cycle...

Re:I never quite understood SWT

[a137035]

I couldn't really see the need for a third widget toolkit (AWT, Swing, SWT)

Swing's integration with the Linux desktop is still lousy. By using native widgets, SWT integrates considerably better.

specially after Sun got some sense and started using the community process to discuss and enhance Java.

Brilliant: hundreds of people working for free to improve Sun's proprietary platform.

It always sounded to me like an IBMish NIH attack.

IBM's position has little to do with "NIH". Sun really has pissed off IBM and a lot of other people: they promised to deliver an ISO/ECMA standard platform, and instead Sun still owns patents, copyrights, licenses, and the approval process for Java.

You can be certain that neither IBM nor open source developers will rest until Sun loses control over Java.

Re:I never quite understood SWT

[david.given]

I couldn't really see the need for a third widget toolkit (AWT, Swing, SWT) specially after Sun got some sense and started using the community process to discuss and enhance Java. It always sounded to me like an IBMish NIH attack.

It's very simple. It works like this:

The AWT sucked. It sucked diseased dead goat through a straw. It was badly designed, badly conceptualised, badly supported, a pain to write for, limited, unexpandable, ugly (on all platforms), and was, in general, a really lousy idea. Even Sun admitted this eventually, which was why they threw it away and developed Swing.

Swing sucked. Not as badly as the AWT, but it still sucked; they'd progressed from goats to humans, and a healthy human at that, but sucking was still involved, as was the straw. Sun had given up on even trying achieving platform-independence using peered widgets, which meant that Swing had to render everything itself, duplicating OS functionality; which meant that it was still ugly on all platforms, but at least it was consistent. Unfortunately, this meant that it was huge and heavyweight. Behind the scenes, they'd fixed a whole bunch of things that meant that it was much less painful to program for, but it was still painful to use and deploy.

IBM invented SWT because they wanted a Java widget set that didn't suck. I'm not entirely certain they actually succeeded --- it's still slow and clunky unless you have a very fast machine --- but it's the best attempt so far. It actually achieves platform-independence successfully, which means that you get native look and feel on all devices, which is still quite hard to get used to. (Compare Linux Eclipse or Azureus with Windows. It's slightly scary how well it works.) The programming model seems to be more straightforward, too, although I'll admit I haven't coded for it. It does seem to be the least bad Java GUI toolkit around.

Re:I never quite understood SWT

[ray-auch]

AWT was poor and Sun knew it, hence Swing. Swing was nicer, but sllooowwww. SWT is a completely different approach, it is really just a java wrapper for the platform native toolkit - not a Java toolkit. Not really NIH since it is a different approach to the problem. Both have pros and cons - eventually the performance difference will reduce and Swing may win for portability, but the competition between the approaches is a good thing.

GUI Editor? - never missed it. A large part of the java dev market is server-side, not quite the same for VB. I haven't yet seen a GUI designer for html UIs that I would want to use (all I've tried fall at the first hurdle of producing sane, editable, html+css layout, without mangling your html). I guess that, like for me, it's way down the priority list for most eclipse users.

Re:I never quite understood SWT

[swilver]

Considering that SWT makes Eclipse behave like a native Windows application, instead of the sluggish feel of Swing, I'd say there was a need.

I always disliked the sluggishness of Swing, and the discrepancies in the look with REAL Windows apps. Things like menu's popping up slowly, sluggish tree controls.. everything just looked slightly off, and felt like I turned off graphics acceleration.

Nowadays, Swing is somewhat improved, but there certainly was and still is a need for SWT.

Re:I never quite understood SWT

[owlstead]

I agree that there is a need for SWT. Just now Swing anounced that they now support the look and feel for Longhorn. Which means that the application will look just like native apps under longhorn. Well, almost. The problem with the Swing approach is that you need to emulate a GUI. This will always be a pain, it it will always work *almost* just like a native application.

SWT makes the more sane approach by using native widgets; that is, for standardized widgets like menu's. It still uses emulation for things like tab's and the like. Furthermore it comes at the expense of leaving the destructions of the widgets to the programmer.

For Eclipse you can use the Eclipse Visual Editor (VE) for simple projects. I strongly advise the Instantiations plugin (simple & commercial version) for more adhanced GUI development. Both can handle both Swing and SWT applications, by the way.

Re:I never quite understood SWT

[DeadMeat (TM)]

SWT's performance is actually pretty good. I've run it on first-gen iPaqs (which use 206MHz ARM CPUs), and while it wasn't going to set any land-speed records, it was usuable with a little patience -- certainly far more so than LwVCL or (groan) Swing 1.1. It sort of gets a bad rap on Linux because, for one reason or another, certain GTK themes (like GTK-Qt and older versions of Bluecurve) cause performance to be noticably worse. After switching from GTK-Qt to Clearlook, it's more than snappy enough for my tastes.

The programming model is simpler, but I wouldn't say it's straightforward. For example, it strictly enforces that all UI operations occur in the UI event thread, which takes some getting used to. (You're supposed to do it with Swing, too, but it's not enforced.) There are some asinine design choices, like placing most of the constants in a monolithic SWT class rather than in the classes that actually use them, and it's missing a lot of the syntatic sugar that Swing has (like being able to set a widget's text during construction).

All in all, it's a quirky library, but with some very slick end results. I keep getting the feeling that Sun's trying to bury it partly because it proves they could have done Java UI toolkits right the first time around, rather than needing five or six major revisions to be usable.

Re:I never quite understood SWT

[iwadasn]

Your historical points are true, but somewhat less valid now.

Currently, swing is slightly faster than SWT. It uses full (or sometimes partial) hardware acceleration, and therefore doesn't end up rendering much with the CPU. This is expected to improve further in the future.

The real problem with swing (currently) has two parts.

1) No drag and drop. In SWT you can drag and drop a grid of stuff into Excel, for instance. This does not (as near as I can tell) work with Swing, though perhaps there are hacks to make it work.

2) It doesn't look native. I really like the metal java LNF, but the people I work with don't. Due to a poorly designed past project they hate java, so we need to either write native code (in which case our project would take 5x longer and have half the features), or make it look native. This means we need to use SWT.

Notice that nobody else does this sort of BS. For instance, when IE screws up, people don't blame C++, but every time a java program is sucky, people blame java first, and the program never.

Oh well, such is life.

If swing can get a really good windows LNF, and good drag and drop, then perhaps we (and everyone else) will switch back. SWT is a pain, mostly due to the .dlls and such.

Re:Come to think of it...

[swilver]

Funny you should mention UltraEdit :) Just 3 weeks ago I converted a good friend of mine from UltraEdit to Eclipse. After I showed him how he could develop Tomcat applications with HotCode replacement, and debug them live inside Eclipse, he wonders how he ever did without.

He's just messaged me asking if I already managed to download Eclipse 3.1 -- I didn't even know it was out yet :)

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[Anxarcule]

Coincidentally, Eclipse is also the name of a wholesale distribution system. Intuit purchased that Eclipse in 2002, so it's now called Intuit Eclipse.

Their website is at: http://eclipse.intuit.com/

I guess it's not unreasonable to think the word "eclipse" would be used repeatedly in the computer world. I used to play on an old text-based MUD named Eclipse too.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[bjtuna]

the frickin web site is /. already so who the heck knows what it is

Use MirrorDot to view Slashdot-linked articles that have gone down under the load.

Bit Torrent

[amembleton]

Are there any .torrent links for this new version of Eclipse?

Re:Bit Torrent

[line.at.infinity]

http://play.aelitis.com/torrents/eclipse-SDK-3.1-w in32.zip.torrent

http://play.aelitis.com/torrents/eclipse-SDK-3.1-m acosx-carbon.tar.gz.torrent

I don't know why the eclipse team (and other organizations) don't just make their own torrents. Hosting Firefox probably isn't cheap.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[mpcooke3]

I agree it does sound like a load of marketing gibberish. I have a better description:

Popular like java itself - but open and not stifled by SUN licensing.
Cross platform GUI - but not crap like SUNs AWT or slow like Swing.
Powerful development tools similar to Netbeans - only unlike SUNs netbeans people use it that aren't forced to by their employers.
Similar to Netbeans only - only unlikes SUNs netbeans has major industry backing and is becoming the java development platform standard.

I sometimes wonder what life would be like if IBM/OTI had developed java, maybe they wouldn't have crippled java's linux possibilities in the way sun has.

By now we could have had a major modern linux development language and environment and linux could be ahead of windows in terms of migrating to a more modern platform/language.

Instead the entire java platform needs to be rewritten from scratch under a license that doesn't cripple it's chances of getting mass adoption on what is probably destined to be Windows major competition on the desktop.

Let me finish by saying "WAKE UP SCOTT MCNEALY SOLARIS IS DIEING - Be a lead player in Java adoption on the desktop by releasing java under a GPL compatible license. You're strategy of keeping java under a non-linux friendly license is helping IBM/Redhat and the longer you leave it the less likely java will ever become a major desktop platform"

Re:Is Java dead ?

[swilver]

Is java suffering from the same problems that every other previous attempt to make an interpreted language work suffered from? Is it just too slow?

No, because the "bytecode" is not actually interpreted all the time, it is in fact interpreted and then compiled into native code and re-used from then on. The code thus produced is specific to your platform, so it can produce code specifically for your Pentium 4 (or whatever you are using) while normal binaries for your platform are often compiled for 80386 (for example).

The price you pay is a slightly increased startup time when new code gets loaded because it still needs to finish compilation.

Remember when Java was once a viable "plugin" for your browser? When was the last time you used it?

Today I think. My bank uses it for secure authentication.

Remember when Java was supposed to be next foundation for desk top applications? Where are they?

I don't ever remember hearing that, I believe Java was to be the next foundation for server side applications. It certainly delivered on that promise.

However, there are a few desktop applications written in Java that are very useable and very nice. Azureus and Eclipse are excellent examples. Most people don't even realize they're written in Java because they look and feel just like normal Windows applications thanks to SWT.

Java's not the new C++ , it's the new Pascal.

I think Java is neither. The programming model is a lot less complex than either of those, yet very powerful. C++/Pascal programmers often have problems letting go of the concept of pointers and have trouble accomplishing things in Java without them. Takes a bit of getting used to.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[ConceptJunkie]

Eclipse is an open platform for tool integration built by an open community of tool providers. Operating under an open source paradigm, with a common public license that provides royalty free source code and world wide redistribution rights, the eclipse platform provides tool developers with ultimate flexibility and control over their software technology.

Eclipse has formed an independent open eco-system around royalty-free technology and a universal platform for tools integration...

{sarcasm}
So I have to ask again, what is this thing?
{/sarcasm}

Yeesh. When did "market-speak" change from clear communication to make a point concisely to buzzword-laden morass that communicates nothing? Wait, don't answer that.

I mean really, do marketing people even have souls? What's wrong with saying it's an "open-source, cross-platform development tool that allows for easy integration with other tools. Eclipse is designed to be very flexible abd robust.". Doesn't that say the same thing without such preteniousness as using "eco-system" to describe software or where every sentence contains half a dozen 3- and 4-word compound nouns?

Heh, eco-system. Makes me think there are frogs and pond scum in the software.

GUI editor for Eclipse

[binarydreams]

Check out the Visual Editor sub-project within Eclipse for a Swing and SWT editor. It's made a lot of improvements in the last couple releases, especially the latest milestone builds of the 1.1 release (which are compatible with Eclipse 3.1).

Re:GUI editor for Eclipse

[Pac]

I may give it another try, when the servers come back to life in a day or two.

Re:Stupid "features"

[swilver]

Considering that the last stable version of Eclipse, 3.0, didn't yet support Java 5 and all the new stuff in it (generics, autoboxing, enhanced for construct, enumerations), I'd say that Java 5.0 support is a pretty good indication what Eclipse 3.1 can do for you now.

This means it can refactor code using Java 5 specifics, it has specific warnings/errors for Java 5 code, quick fixes, code formatting/highlighting, and so on.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[kryptx]

An IDE is a certain type of program, such as Eclipse.

Hope that helps.

What? I already had it!

[cheesy9999]

Unless some sneaky admin updated Eclipse before I got to work this morning I already had Eclipse 3.1.0, not to mention the copyright says 2004...hmmm...me confuzzled.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[tolkienfan]

Programmers have a long history of writing programs with coffee or other caffeinated beverage.

I almost agree

[Pac]

AWT sucked so badly that people stoped talking about client side Java and run to the headless servers. The first Swing sucked too, but not so badly. In 1.5 Swing is almost grown-up and quite faster. They have also hired some non-color-blind people to revamp the default look and feel, and it now looks nice (there were ways to make it look nice in 1.3 to 1.4.x, but those were mostly undocumented).

My other main problem is having no easy migration path, hence my problem with the lack of a GUI editor - if I am going to migrate my apps and have to redesign all user interfaces around a new toolkit, the least I need is a GUI editor - rewriting everything in code would be painfully close to my early days writing GUIs for Apple II programs...

Rich Client Applications?

[John Hurliman]

I'm glad this release is targeting rich clients, because I was really getting sick of contracting for those clients with no money.

Server X Client side

[Pac]

Just to make it clear, I mentioned VB just for its ground-breaking (at the time it was quite right to call it revolutionary) approach to GUI building.

As for Java, I have been successfully using Java to develop both server and client apps for years. As Java evolved and got faster, the client-side scene was born again from the AWT ashes. Today we (me, my company) find very little use for anything else (we have been even doing some great Swingless Java2D full-screen experiments). So, as I said in another comment, without a GUI editor the migration from Netbeans/Swing to Eclipse/SWT would be so painfully slow that I would say it would not be economically feasible (mind you, I am not talking about small apps with hundreds of lines, I am talking about multi-thousand to tens of thousands of lines apps).

Impressed but can't update.

[mebob]

I have to say that I'm loving 3.0.

CFEclipse and PHPEclipse have allowed me to completely ditch dreamweaver.

Will eclipse 3.0 update to 3.1 with the built in updater?

Is there a way to use the 'FTP and WebDAV' support to edit sites like dreamweaver

Subversion?

[leoboiko]

Is subversion natively supported yet? Last time I saw using it with Eclipse required you to manually recompile subversion with some java binding thing and then installing an plugin...

Re:Subversion?

[d-rock]

I had been using subclipse (http://subclipse.tigris.org/) with Eclipse 3.0 for SVN support and it worked great in both Windows and Linux. Something broke part of subclipse around 3.1RC3 to the point that I couldn't add or browse repositories. Just a tip that I figured out, though: if you use a normal SVN tool (TortoiseSVN, SVN CLI) to check out a project, then when you import the project into Eclipse subclipse will be able to work with the repo just fine (as of RC7, still downloading 3.1 final).

Derek

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[snorklewacker]

Who the hell moderated this crap up, and can we just ban those accounts for life from moderating?

DOH!

[sgt scrub]

I Downloaded 2.1 when it first came out. I finally got it running today and now this!

I this build I20050617-1618?

[not-enough-info]

I downloaded bid:I20050617-1618 a couple weeks ago. Can somebody tell me if this is the same build?

Re:I this build I20050617-1618?

[David Off]

I'm on build:

Eclipse Version: 3.1.0
Build id: I20050513-1415

Downloadeda about 6 weeks ago because I needed 5.0 support. It seems stable, I doubt this new build adds anything apart from bugfixes.

Re:Come to think of it...

[dubious9]

I responded at another of your posts so...

I used Ultraedit during my first year of college when I found that using notepad wasn't nearly good enough. I basically started to use it for line numbering hehe. Shows you how anyhting is better than notepad. Anyway, yeah, it's a really good product.

However, since then I've moved to JEdit. It's free (libre), the base install is simple, and it's integrated plugin manager allows almost IDE functionality. I figured I'd recommend it since you've never heard of eclipse. And not to start a flame war, but IMHO it's the best pure-GUI programmer's text editor out there.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[Sunkist]

Here's a link that might help. This link might help as well.

If you need help on what a "link" is though, you'll need to go here.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[WillAffleckUW]

So what the heck is an IDE? you give this explination but don't explain these advanced terms.

On that what is Java? "It's written in java?" does that have something to do with coffee?

Geesh, Arson, give me a break.

IDE is Integrated Development Environment.

Java is a platform-independent programming language using object-oriented class structures to encapsulate and provide security for various uses.

Newb is what I used to call people that flamed others who ask a simple question because the submitter didn't bother having more than one link or even a faq link or brief explanation - but then I grew up and stopped the flamewars.

Digits? Digits???

[Pac]

Care to count how many digits my account has? And mind you, this is my second account, I lost the first one.

Now, please, you're asking for it. While I fully understand the generic need for better Slashdot posts (alas, that's a lost war already - they won't change) asking about Eclipse in the terms you did is just too funny to let it pass. Now go ask in the Apple section what an iPod is and in the Apache section what the heck is this HTTP thing people keep talking about.

Re:Digits? Digits???

[WillAffleckUW]

Care to count how many digits my account has? And mind you, this is my second account, I lost the first one.

Mine is half yours.

That's ok, I remember 110 baud modems too.

Re:Digits? Digits???

[MikeBabcock]

To be honest, I don't care how big your penis is either.

The poster has a point -- all articles announcing product should describe the product or give a link to what the product does or is.

To be honest, I've been coding for Linux since 1995 and didn't hear about Eclipse until a few months ago because of Fedora including it.

I'm a vi/make/gcc person, why would I care?

I've tried a few GUIs I haven't liked, a few I have, I'll try Eclipse one of these days too. Giving people a hard time for not knowing what it is is just rude though, no matter how many digits your user id has.

Re:Digits? Digits???

[Pac]

As I implied somewhere along the way, I even agree. Slashdot is pretty lazy in this respect when a simple two-word explanation "...[Java IDE] Eclipse..." would have been enough.

My point was that the poster was way beyond the call of duty here. And he brought the digits thing up, not me, I just found it funny he started talking about how many digits his account had without even noticing mine...

Re:Digits? Digits???

[MikeBabcock]

May I take this moment to go completely unnoticed in my request for a meta-moderation of editors forum?

I'd like to be allowed to post meta comments about the actual story posting instead of about the story somewhere the editors will see and take notice of.

Re:Come to think of it...

[WillAffleckUW]

However, since then I've moved to JEdit. It's free (libre), the base install is simple, and it's integrated plugin manager allows almost IDE functionality. I figured I'd recommend it since you've never heard of eclipse. And not to start a flame war, but IMHO it's the best pure-GUI programmer's text editor out there.

I know a few people who like JEdit too. We do a lot of Perl - more than Java - but I'll keep it in mind.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[WillAffleckUW]

ah, so it's really from March to June that it's picked up steam - that explains a lot.

I've been reading a lot of Biology, Biochem, Protein, and Bioinformatics texts during that time, as well as advanced Perl.

I already get Sys-Con's Java mags at home and via email - but have been bogged down learning other skill sets - e.g. Biochem/etc - so that's a useful answer.

Re:Stupid "features"

[rimu guy]

Java 5.0 support means that it will run faster, and help you make programs faster, that run faster, too, in a nutshell.

Incorrect. Eclipse 3.0 has always run just fine on a java5 jvm. And it gets the small speed increase that VM imparts.

JDK 5 support means that the editor 'knows' about the new java5 langauage features. And moreover the editor can refactor code using that knowledge.

--
Tomcat Hosting

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[mpcooke3]

I really meant java desktop development was stifled. After microsoft killed their java implementation Sun could have atleast made it viable on the linux platform and relaxed the requirements to distribute a 15 meg platform with your clientside app on windows.

"I use NetBeans by choice and I know a lot of others that do as well."
Fair enough. I have great difficulty persuading my colleagues to even use FREE tools/apps written in swing. I don't find swing apps are generally very responsive or nice to use. But who knows, once i used Emacs and now I use VI.

"These people seem to think they are backing netbeans."
True, though the last SUN employee i talked to was using eclipse and said he'd run netbeans when it stopped crashing. That hasn't encouraged me to try it again.

"Easy, if IBM developed Java, they would have kept it to themselves..."

True.

"I'm sure the IBM PR department are very happy to know they're doing a good job."

Yes, although people on IBM payroll are contributing a lot these days to open source and real code sometimes too, not just endless over complicated specifications written by comitees.

"Right, cause RedHat and SuSE don't include java in their distros and IBM doesn't sell any products that bundle Java?"

This is distro tack on stuff. Unless java was opened up it will never be used for key projects like gnome and mainstream apps - for one thing debian will never bundle it. Most of the redhat suse stuff is tack on enterprise server stuff, not related to the desktop platform.

"I'm sure the CEO of a multi billion dollar corporation has just been holding back until some random guy on slashdot...."

No of course not, i was just ranting. Mind you, he has a lot more to lose in stock options than me.

Well, that's probably why.

[devphil]

I've got a Sun Java backpack I wear to work, [...] And - I've - never - heard - of - Eclipse.

Sun Microsystems doesn't like to talk about, or even acknowledge the existence of, Eclipse. Unless you really pester them about it.

After all, IBM picked the name: they're eclipsing the sun...

Re:Well, that's probably why.

[WillAffleck]

I've since found out that most of the interest in this has been from March until June of this year, so considering I switched careers from standard development to Bioinformatics - even tho we use many of the same tools - it probably just looked like Yet Another Thing That Will Pass when I saw the email alerts from sys-con.

So, next time someone submits a post, hopefully they'll include a brief description and a link to the faq and bugtraq pages.

Re:Well, that's probably why.

[cc5150]

Actually, Eclipse's been around for much longer than that. I dunno where you get the March to June thing from. There might have been a spike of interest around the 3.X releases but the Eclipse project has been making waves in the Java world for a few years now (2001? or 2002?) Every Java dev I know uses either one of 3 IDEs: Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA (my fav), or emacs :-)

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[CODiNE]

So what the heck is an IDE? you give this explination but don't explain these advanced terms.

Technically it would be more correct asking "What is IDE?" instead of using "an IDE", since IDE is a type of hard disk... it's being replaced by SATA these days, but still nice and cheap. IDE descends from RLE hard drives... they were called that because of the "Run-Length Encoding" compression scheme they used to store data more efficiently. The Microsoft / Stacker case is a large part of why the industry left RLE HD's behind and moved to IDE. IDE of course stands for "Integer-Deliminated Encoding", which is a much more advanced storage mechanism that relies on wavelets and sometimes pixlets (But that's an Apple tech).

Moving on...
On that what is Java? "It's written in java?" does that have something to do with coffee?
You are correct here... "Written in Java" however is grammatically incorrect and should be "Written ON Java". This describes the programming method used to develop the Eclipse IDE hard disk technology. Since wavelet and pixlet compression using Integer-Deliminated Encoding is considered a form of "Extreme Programming", it requires a hefty intake of Java and other energy drinks such as Red Bull or Ballz. Using the new Kabbalah drinks qualifies your development style as "Black Arts" programming. I'm sure you remember seeing various books about Black Magic programming, Voodoo and of course the Linux bible... that's why religious wars about Operating Systems and text editors always come up here.

I could go on about the cult of the Penguin and the art of summoning daemons but I'd like to keep this post short and simple to help educate those who are new to programming.

Re:Come to think of it...

[owlstead]

I am a long time UltraEdit user myself. But almost none of my Java code goes into UltraEdit anymore. The Eclipse IDE is much, much more productive and it's code insight / refactoring support makes the difference. The debugger is pretty good as well.

I do still use UltraEdit obviously. For example for testing the new Java 5.0 versions before eclipse supported it in their 3.1 alpha and beta versions. And it is much better for viewing log files, opening lots of text files, its hex editor is more advanced, it's support for.. well you get the gist.

But for Java projects, you need an IDE to be productive. I think Eclipse is pretty good and pretty intuitive, but there are several other good (and sometimes free) solutions.

If you use either Eclipse or UltraEdit, please become an active member of the community. Both Ian Mead of UltraEdit and the Eclipse team react pretty adequately to bug reports and feature requests as I found out.

The plugins!

[owlstead]

To understand why the Eclipse platform is used by so many people take a look at this (non-commercial) site, and browse through the numerous Eclipse plugins.

There are plugins for almost everything. This will take the heat off the download servers as well. It takes at least a few hours just to notice the most important plugins :)

Not about MHz... Memory is the problem

[vhogemann]

Actually I my Eclipse runs just fine on my Pentium III 700 MHz, and that's the 3.1M6 with the WebTools Pluguins and a Tomcat instance running!!

Of course I had to upgrade from mere 256MB to 768MB to achive good performance. Eclipse eats every bit of memory you may throw at it, and keeps asking for more.

I guess that 256MB is the bare minimum, 512MB is usable and 1GB+ is what I'd recommend for serious development.

Re:Come to think of it...

[WillAffleck]

I am a long time UltraEdit user myself. But almost none of my Java code goes into UltraEdit anymore. The Eclipse IDE is much, much more productive and it's code insight / refactoring support makes the difference. The debugger is pretty good as well.

Most of my Java code is in the IDE - or occassionally I edit it raw in Star*Team.

I do still use UltraEdit obviously. For example for testing the new Java 5.0 versions before eclipse supported it in their 3.1 alpha and beta versions. And it is much better for viewing log files, opening lots of text files, its hex editor is more advanced, it's support for.. well you get the gist.

I do a lot more Perl scripting - since I'm a bioinformatician - so I find UltraEdit fits a lot of my needs. Have a lot of log files and text files - so probably why I use that.

But for Java projects, you need an IDE to be productive. I think Eclipse is pretty good and pretty intuitive, but there are several other good (and sometimes free) solutions.

Currently as I said I just use the ones with JBuilder and StarTeam since that's what the dev team in the other UW uses.

But thanks for the info! Useful to know.

TORRENT HAS BEEN POSTED

[infiniteedge]

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:BW6W3QUP7CD23KZRGZG4BK7M4LX2WB K3

import this into Azureus with File->Open->Location... for a trackerless torrent. Also works with BT 4.1.2 beta, although I have no idea how to use it. Remove a space in that magnet uri if slashdot mistakenly put one there.

View the parent for the regular torrent.

Torrent available at:

[csimoes]

http://play.aelitis.com/torrents/eclipse-SDK-3.1-w in32.zip.torrent

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[mpcooke3]

IBM is making a lot of money from Global Services that relies on giving away (open sourcing) a lot of code. Personally i don't have a problem with IBM making money from this. I also thought that SUN should open source java in a GPL compatible way before it hit the headlines.

I don't believe that Java would fall apart if they released a GPL compatible version and let Jakarta Apache style projects develop instead of the current comitee-heavy/code-light JCP process. Compare the quality and ease of use of Apache Jakarta projects with the heavy handed and poor-performance riddled j2EE-EJB framework.

In fact I think Sun could make MORE money from java if they opened it up, particularly in the longer term.

Looking at the software stack, the idea is to make money at the top of the stack and give away the base for free. Sun chose to open up solaris more than java. But the OS is already a commodity item it's too late to get people hooked into using you "OS platform" it's not long before even banks start refering to legacy solaris. It wasn't too late to get people hooked into using the "java platform" which is quite high up the software stack.

Java is a break even business model for Sun because Sun isn't taking advantage of java in the way that IBM is. And eclipse versus netbean is just one of the key areas that sun is struggling due to it's lack of open-ness and IMO poor design decisions. I was half expecting SUN to write a 3rd crossplatform GUI toolkit after swing.

Re:Stupid "features"

[propellor_head]

Also, it means you can make force the compiler to make java 1.5 the minimum requirement (-target 1.5). You could not do this in previous versions of eclipse, even if you were using the 1.5 SDK.

anti virus

[enos]

I found the big time hog on Eclipse startup to be the anti virus scanner. The eclipse process takes 20 seconds CPU time (P4 ~2GHz, 512MB), while the AV had almost 2 minutes. I guess it's because of the large number of small files to scan.

The second startup just takes 20 seconds. Still not that great, but better than 2 mins.

Re:anti virus

[q-the-impaler]

This also works with IBMs Rational Application Developer 6.0 (WSAD 5.1++). It is Eclipse based and turning off the virus scanner greatly increases load time.

Re:anti virus

[q-the-impaler]

Umm, make that decreases... doh

Re:Come to think of it...

[Ingolfke]

I was like textpad, very clean, no extra anything from a basic instal. But what made it different was you could import new modules (functions).

vi?

Recipe for /.ing

[dtfinch]

1) Release 100mb download, with stated goal of reaching a million downloads.
2) Post link on slashdot _before_ the download has been mirrored.
3) Watch in horror as tens of thousands of users try to download from the main server because it's not on the mirrors because the mirrors can't reach the main server.

MAC OS X Torrent available at:

[ManikSurtani]

http://play.aelitis.com/torrents/eclipse-SDK-3.1-m acosx-carbon.tar.gz.torrent

Linux GTK Torrent available:

[csimoes]

I could not find a torrent for the Linux verison, so I made one. You can get the Linux GTK version at: http://simoes.org/eclipse-SDK-I20050627-1435-linux -gtk.tar.gz.torrent

Re:Linux GTK Torrent available:

[fmerenda]

Thanks! This torrent is *flying* for me.
My dsl is maxed out at 135KB/sec!

-Frank

Re:Linux GTK Torrent available:

[djaquay]

Indeed, thanks for that. Why, pray tell, doesn't eclipse.org do this?

What About Word Wrap?

[selfish]

Will word wrap make an appearance in Eclipse anytime soon? I've heard that it would require a core rewrite of Eclipse in order to implement it...anyone know otherwise?

My co-workers keep trying to push Eclipse on me, but with such a simple feature as word wrap missing, I've just got to stick with jEdit.

Is this feature in Eclipse, and he's just missed it somewhere? I mean, c'mon: what text editor doesn't have word wrap? (Not that Eclipse is a plain ol' text editor, I didn't mean any offense to the Eclipse hot-heads. ;-)

Re:What About Word Wrap?

[mabinogi]

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).

Re:A good GUI builder for Java plugin?

[AndrewR81]

I just learned about the visual editor. According to some posts, it's usable but not complete.

Since eclipse.org is struggling, there's a screenshot about halfway down this IBM visual editor tutorial.

Working mirrors

[JavaRob]

I had the page up to the mirrors, then even the routing pages died (so I had to extract that actual mirror link from the full URL...); anyway, here's one mirror that's zipping along for me. And I will post this reply as soon as my download finishes...

win32 zip at mirror.reachable.ca

You can figure out the base directory from that if you want it for another platform.

And a few more that I haven't tested, in various countries (trying to pick the ones that look the toughest):

gulus.USherbrooke.ca
mirrorservice.org
eclipse.objectweb.org
software-mirror.com
sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de

Final note: some of these are definitely hosed; the first seems to work. Gotta hand it to the Canadians -- they're the ones staying up.

Re:Stupid "features"

[drgonzo59]

The lack of Java 5.0 support was a turn-off for me. Netbeans had that for quite a while, and I happen to be fond of those new features (such as autoboxing and generics) and don't want them flagged as errors by the editor. So as powerful as Eclipse was, I switched to Netbeans 4.1 and I am liking it, don't think I'll switch back any time soon.

Trying out eclipse?

[AndrewR81]

This isn't directly related to 3.1, but maybe there will be people trying out eclipse.

When I started using eclipse (at 3.0), I wish I had known that projects are synched with the file system. After creating a project, there's no need to "add files" or "import folder" to the project - just hit F5 and the file structure where your project is located will be used. I kept looking for something more complicated :) Right click on your main class, Run -> Java Application.

Hit F1 in any editor window, and a menu of ~10 topics will pop up. I found these well worth the look! They're well-structured and full of useful screenshots.

ed2k, emule, edonkey

[hlee]

With an emule client (http://www.emule-project.net/home/perl/general.cg i?l=1&rm=download), you can download the win32 version here:
ed2k://|file|eclipse-SDK-3.1-win32.zip|1080 06934|9 C64A5F7A549254AF8DD3835247E0887|h=CXW2OP3EICJF7CWP TOR44ZT6S5QIT3P3|/

You'll probably need to strip slashspaces from the emule and ed2k links.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[nacturation]

You forgot to mention MFM... man, I remember when $10/MB was a great price for a hard drive.

Re:Jar? Faster???

[LDoggg_]

Why wouldn't a jar be faster?

Of course, anything associated with java must be slow I guess, whatever.

There is nothing inherently slow about jar files. A Jar is simply a zip file with a .jar extension that may or may not use compression. You can can open it with winzip or unzip.

Smaller files mean less disk IO. The CPU usage to decompress the class files into ram is relatively low.

Re:Stupid "features"

[swilver]

Yes, I like the new Java features a lot as well.

I still used Eclipse though, because the milestone versions for 3.1 had full Java 5 support about 6 months ago already, and they were really quite stable. Only the advanced features like specific warnings and refactorings took a little bit longer to get added, but I was quite happy even without those :)

SWT: Looks & Speed

[nikster]

SWT is in many ways what Swing should have been, or a bare-bones version of it.

The difference is that SWT uses native widgets whereas Swing emulates native widgets or paints an entirely new set - your choice.

I will never understand this decision. It is good nerd fun to switch the "pluggable" GUI but it adds insane complexity to the drawing process - and the whole GUI framework - while at the same time makes users complain that Swing apps look alien on their desktop.
Sun also has to release a new Swing version every time WinXP / OS X change their looks. SWT gets these changes for free just like any other native app. It's quite horrible, and they are lucky that the look and feel doesn't change often.

But, yeah, run an app that will only run under JDK 1.2 and it will look like Win2K. Way to go to make a good impression on the desktop!

The problem with Swing is that there is absolutely no solution. The best a Java developer can do is go with a nice looking GUI framework - like jgoodies - and live with the differences.

SWT originally also was way, way faster than Swing. Swing is the main factor people considered Java slow in the beginning. Swing was hand-drawing pixels on the screen without hardware acceleration! Nowadays, Swing is hardware accelerated - again great effort was required - and close enough to native speed that no one will notice.

Swing is a failure of an architecture - it requires immense resources to keep up to date and to make it fast. For what? So that we can see the god-awful Metal GUI? IBM was right to do SWT...

IDE usage

[tpv]

You need to drink more of the SUN kool-ade.
Supposedly everyone(*) is switching to NetBeans.

(*) NB: Switchers may not be real people.

I Agree

[earthstar]

I feel the sameway - Had no clue to what it was about. Something like tooltip should be available for such subjects.

I like your thinking...

[aug24]

...but it's not quite there yet for the average user:

A new version of Apache [an http [http is the web [that big E on your desktop] protocol [how two computers [the big tv on your desk] talk to one another] server [a program [an ordered set of instructions[what you can never follow you luser] that runs all the time] was just released.

Yeah, that's it.

J.

Re:I like your thinking...

[marat]

But there's already a CNN for this.

Re:Come to think of it...

[ros0709]

Eclipse on Linux seems to have greater memory requirements: perhaps parent has Windows and grandparent has Linux. My own experience: running 3.0 on a PIII 700Mhz 512MB under XP is "fine". On slightly better h/w (PII 800Mhz 512MB) under Debian Sarge and Gnome performance was abysmal until memory was doubled to 1GB.

Incredibly bloated

[sakhmechet]

I am one of the few who develop a client application on top of Eclipse platform (RCP). I can only say that it's the most bloated piece of software I have ever seen. The API is really incredible: thousands of classes, many duplicating Java functionality. Dozens, sometimes hundreds of methods in the classes. A lot of core Java functionality is changed in return for dubeous advantages. I really don't know what their designers are smoking. From the UI perspective Eclipse IDE seems similar to me. It feels bloated and unintuitive. That being said, it has excellent refactoring features that make modifying and navigating code a pleasure. Every time I use a different IDE I miss these features tremendously. Another words, I hate working in Eclipse because it's bloated and unintuitive and I hate working with anything else because of lack of excellent features that Eclipse makes so useful.

checklist...

[dostick]

[x] Post from someone asking "What is this eclipse thing? Astronomical program of some sort? please explain."
[x] Post by someone using some weird VM/extension/platform and having problem with it that everyone must know about.
[x] 20 posts "how about .torrent link anyone?"
[x] 20 posts that torrent distribution should be a standart..

Re:Stupid "features"

[orasio]

Read the parent first.

I was replying to an AC troll (my fault) who said he didn't care about the java version, but the features.

I said three things: eclipse runs faster, you program faster programs that will run faster.

Having more power to work with Java 1.5 means nothing by itself, and that was the only point of the AC I replied to. Of course, it means you can work with a VM tailored for speed, in every sense. Whether it provides a small, or a big speed increase, depends on what you are developing, and your needs, but the "feature" that java 1.5 tries to provide is speed. Running and coding speed.

Check your computer...

[JavaRob]

There must be something else going on with your computer.

I'm using an old Dell laptop with Win2K, 1.3 GHZ P3, 512 RAM. Half the machine yours is, and plenty of issues accumulating after years of use without a clean reinstall (IE tends to take a full minute or two to start up when I have to run it, for example).

Anyway, first run of Eclipse 3.1 took about 20 seconds from double-click to workspace loaded. My text coloring is off and I clearly need to go through the settings again, but it works fine. Opening a project, source file, etc. doesn't take more than 1-2 seconds.

Closed down, re-ran -- after the first startup, now it's 8 seconds from double-click to useable workspace. Memory usage: 41MB, VM Size: 69MB. Not bad at all -- I'm not swapping, and I have various databases and other server software running locally at the same time.

So... I'm guessing your startup problems are your own. Good luck.

Why does it stall?

[aclidiere]

You mentioned that Eclipse occasionally stalls. It happens for me too, and I find it annoying. Do you know what's happening?

I'm particularly interested in knowing if SWT -- the GUI toolkit underneath Eclipse -- is the cause (in which case I will reconsider using it for my apps), or if instead the problem is a sudden heavy garbage collection.

Heavy garbage collection can be avoided if helping the garbage collector by:

• Making less objects, re-using objects
• Setting all members of an object to null when the object is not longer used.

Re:Why does it stall?

[demigod]

Perhaps you would find this useful. Havne't tried it yet myself.

Cloudgarden's MemoryManager is a small plugin for IBM's Eclipse Java IDE, which displays the current memory usage of Eclipse (letting you know when Eclipse is close to using up all it's memory allowance), and automatically invokes garbage collection when deemed necessary by a simple but effective algorithm (see below), thus preventing or reducing times of forced inactivity while the Eclipse JVM cleans up it's virtual memory space.

http://cloudgarden.com/memorymanager/index.html

It's open source too.

Day one using the new release

[JavaRob]

Okay, I like it -- everything's visibly faster (starting up, shutting down, opening files/projects/etc.), the settings make more sense now and are easier to navigate (you can type in a filter like "color" and it'll just show you all of the settings pages where you can set colors of some kind. Sweet). They also link helpfully to related settings pages. No drastic additions that I see so far -- though it's a workday, so I haven't spent much time exploring yet. My code formatting profile was carried over perfectly into the new version, as did various build profiles and so on for 14 different projects (though the one Eclipse plugin project seems to be in need of help).

The support for 1.5 seems quite complete and well-integrated (including a slew of possible new coding style warnings); but I'm not developing to 1.5 right now, so I won't vouch for everything.

Most of the other changes I've noticed are like these and what you'd expect for a solid minor release -- nothing drastic, but lots of little enhancements across the board.

The main trouble right now is that most 3rd party plugins won't support the new version yet, for example PHPeclipse (which I use now and again). I'll be keeping 3.0.1 around for a bit because of this.

One minor glitch that I ran into using a workspace from earlier versions was that I couldn't change the selection foreground/background -- that's because I had overridden this value earlier in the Java editor prefs pages... and you can't change it there anymore, BUT the setting was still being read (and the setting I put in the text editor prefs page was still being overridden...).

If you run into something like this, close eclipse and search through the properties files where these settings are stored: /your.eclipse.workspace/.metadata/.plugins/org.ecl ipse.core.runtime/.settings/

In this case, I had to delete the AbstractTextEditor.Color.SelectionForeground and Background keys in org.eclipse.jdt.ui.prefs, then everything worked fine when I restarted.

Overall, I'm pleased -- the last big upgrade I had to redo my code formatting rules and syntax-highlighting colors/fonts from scratch (which takes awhile.. gotta have that black bg though!).

Re:Day one using the new release

[erlenic]

I just downloaded 3.1 and PHPEclipse with this announcement, and it's worked fine for me for two days now. Although I'm new to Eclipse so maybe there's a ton of features I just don't know about that aren't working.

Re:Day one using the new release

[JavaRob]

Cool; thanks! I didn't even try running it... their homepage says "The current PHPeclipse version 1.1.4 works only with Eclipse 3.0.x versions" -- but this may just be that they haven't tested it on the new version yet.

I'll give it a shot.

Confusion Eclipse/SWT

[aclidiere]

You're right, it's confusing. The message on Eclipse.org is totally unclear.

They call the Eclipse Platform what we like to call the IDE; and the SWT toolkit is hidden in the Eclipse Platform binaries.

Plus, I don't remember any marketing of the JFace API, a nice high-level toolkit on top of SWT. The Eclipse IDE uses JFace, or directly SWT for its GUI.

Thanks.

[aclidiere]

Thanks, I'll look at the plugin.

Note that last time I noticed a stall, my hard drive became very busy. Also, most of the times, stalls occur when restoring focus to the code editing area.

Re:Is it just me, or couldn't posts about Dev thin

[mpcooke3]

By-the-by there was an article on the register today about the IBM-Sun relationship.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/30/ibm_java/

I suppose one of the things that bugs me is that microsoft killed java on the desktop then cloned it with dot-net, failed to innovate at all and now SUN is their best friend.

IBM on the other hand has done massive amounts to promote the java platform and their only crime is that they created a more popular ide platform /appserver and hence make more money out of java. But sun dislikes them and I feel holds back the whole java platform on linux just to thwart IBM's growth, they could work with IBM to grow the enterprise java market and thwart the proprietary dotnet take u. Particularly with IBM moving out of hardware.

I can only really see the Sun-Microsoft relationship as desperation setting in.