Eclipse Makes Java Development on the Mac Easier

An anonymous reader writes "While the Java development environment is fully integrated into Mac OS X, the Eclipse developer IDE brings a fully integrated Java development environment to Mac OS X that provides a more consistent and easier to develop cross-platform experience. This article shows you how quickly you can be up and running with Eclipse and Java development on the Mac. 'Whether you're a Mac OS X Java developer working on cross-platform Java projects, a Linux developer switching to Mac OS X because of its UNIX-based core, or a general Java developer looking to develop applications targeted to Mac OS X, you'll want to look at the Eclipse IDE because it provides a solution to each of these development needs. While Mac OS X provides Xcode as its primary Java development IDE, Eclipse provides a more robust cross-platform development environment, with application frameworks for reporting, database access, communications, graphics, and more, and a rich-client platform framework for building applications.'"

Comments

I'm curious why this is being pushed...

[Umuri]

At the university i attend as a CS major, there is a big push in the CS classes to use the Eclipse IDE, and trying to use any other one is frowned upon and teachers try to pressure you into switching due to some hidden policy.

My question is anyone have an earthly idea why eclipse is being pushed so much?

From what i've tried, there are other IDEs that are more widely used/accepted as efficient IDEs, and others that i just plain work faster in and are less full of clutter. So did eclipse use to be some industry standard at a forbes 500 or do they have marketing trolls or what?

-Confused Student

Well, it works great

[DavidApi]

This article interested me greatly, as I have just recently secured a contract working for a project based on Java and Oracle (developed in Windows). I've taken the code, installed Eclipse for Mac (J2EE), changed the DB connection to MySQL (running on my Mac) and got it running.

And pretty mostly, while I've relearnt Java (from a lapse of 8 years) and got to grips with all the cool and new stuff (like Hibernate, JUnit, Swing, Ant, JBoss etc), I've been able to run the tutorials I've found without too much tweaking.

Now, I'm not a great coder, but getting the pieces to work (like all mentioned above, plus things like Derby) hasn't been a big drama. The cross-platform dream really works! The book I bought, "eclipse Web Tools Platform" published by Addison Wesley (which I highly recommend), isn't focussed on Eclipse Development using a Mac. The examples and diagrams are all Windows looking - BUT I can follow them on my Mac, and get the same results.

I can't compare Eclipse to anything else, but it's doing the job.

PS I'm actually more a Perl programmer - so I thought I'd search for a Perl plugin. Well, there is! EPIC. Easy install (like the other plugins for Eclipse I've grabbed), and so I can do Perl in Eclipse too.

And finally, after reading the foreword in the above mentioned book, I like the philosophy of the whole Eclipse project. It's a worthy project to support - regardless of what platform you use and favour.

Go Eclipse! And Thanks to all the people who're making it happen!

Re:NetBeans??

[doktorjayd]

so your eclipse hotshot couldnt:

- check out from source control
- select 'source' folders from the checked out spot, and right click to 'use as source folder' ( do this for test classes too )
- define where to spit the compiled classes to
- select the libraries in the checked out project and 'add to build path'
- double click build.xml, select target to run and press play...

dare i say your eclipse guy may have been bluffing.

i've come across all sorts of good|bad|ugly project layouts in the java ( and c, and perl, and .Shit ) world, but with eclipse, thats pretty much all that you ever need to do to get a build going which has not had the eclipse metadata added to source control.

getting the project running inside the ide can be a different story, from as easy as selecting the class with public static void Main(String[] args) in it , through to loading up a plugin with a j2ee container like jboss ( or just create a debug target with all the jars in a tomcat release and use org.apache.catalina.bootstrap.Startup as the main class...), and hooking in your web app as directed by the wizards.

what i find really out of whack in the parent, grandparent, and all the other little side fires going on is that the argument eclipse is being cast as Netbeans.

i've been working java professional services for years, in and around dozens of client sites with all sorts of java developers at different levels, and i tell ya, the flamewars are all eclipse vs. idea intelliJ.

netbeans? hmmm. netbeans 4 was nice in that it was all worked around ant, but the down side was that each project you create ( and get an autogenerated build.xml ) always ended up with these tenticles that meant you needed all the netbeans libraries around just to get a build going, namely through all the -targets and the taskdefs they wired in.

netbeans was a decent ide for standard swing|awt dev a number of years ago, but had a nasty habit of generating a metric assload of .sidefiles for every gui class that you built, as well as wiring in //##START_SECTION comments all over the shop which of course were completely useless outside of netbeans. does it still do that? maybe i grab a recent bundle some time and have another look.

then theres getting back to the original post.

this is not news.

eclipse has run on OSX for years. the SWT libraries have sometimes lagged a few months behind other platforms in the past ( windows & linux are usually out at the same time ), but this has changed over the last year or 2, and the major platforms are now pretty much all out at the same time.