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Picking the Right Eclipse Distribution

Posted by kdawson on from the dark-side-of-the-moon dept.

Someone over at IBM Developerworks who prefers anonymity writes "Depending on what you want to do, there is probably a commercial or free distro built on the Eclipse platform waiting for you. From C/C++, Ruby, PHP, Groovy, Java, and Web development, you can use an IDE built on Eclipse to help you. The big question is: Which Eclipse distribution is right for you?"

6 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Web Development by antimatter15 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I use the http://aptana.com/ eclipse distribution for web development. Its great for PHP, RoR, JavaScript, HTML, etc. But I don't see it mentioned anywhere

  2. None of them by jlarocco · · Score: 3, Informative

    Eclipse sucks. It uses 10x more memory than it should, it's a gigantic download, it's slow, the user interface is annoying, it takes forever to start, getting support for new file types requires downloading dozens of megabytes of "plugins", the autocomplete is slow, it only allows you to do one thing at a time (i.e. try configuring build settings and starting a build at the same time), outside of installing (or creating) a new "plugin" it's not very customizable, different "project" types have radically different interfaces, ...

    I could go on all day. I'll stick with Emacs, thanks.

    --
    Maybe not
  3. It's not the "in" opinion.. but.. by Anrego · · Score: 4, Informative

    I actually like eclipse.

    It's ability to deal with multiple languages, and especially it's perspective system makes my job a lot easier.

    I think there are really two reasons people don't like eclipse.

    The first is obvious. It's a bloated resource hungry Java application. I definitely agree with this. For eclipse to be usable you need a pretty beefy machine. A lot of people refuse to use eclipse, even if they have a powerful machine, just on the principle that it is so damned bloated.

    The second is that the "out of the box" settings are terrible. Toolbars are in awkward places, important options are buried, and of course things like "highlighting occurrences", something I have _never_ understood the point of, are enabled by default. Eclipse takes a fair bit of tweaking before it becomes usable.

  4. Re:Whichever one doesn't require Java by setagllib · · Score: 4, Informative

    Right, because with an installer that occupies an entire DVD, Visual Studio is *so* much leaner than Eclipse' 100-200MB + JRE.

    You can fit Eclipse with JDT, CDT, PyDev, RDT, Subclipse, WST, DTP, etc. and the JDK (which includes source and documentation for the entire API), Python, Ruby, and heaps more, on one CD, with room left over. I know because I've done it. 7zip is your friend.

    --
    Sam ty sig.
  5. You are wrong, Eclipse has its uses by Mantaar · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're wrong. Most people are. That's because they don't know about the awesomeness that is eclim. It's a nifty little plugin that keeps a headless Eclipse instance running and exports its features to vim. So you can have automatic code highlighting, manage your classpath efficiently, have your get/setters done automatically, auto-completion, auto-whatnot.

    It's great! Give it a try. I would never use Eclipse itself, but I wouldn't want to miss eclim...

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    I'm an infovore...
  6. PIDA, it loves you! by Shazow · · Score: 4, Informative

    I use PIDA, because it loves me.

    It's more of an IDE "container" that handles things like file browsing, buffer management, multiple projects, consoles, TODO/FIXME comments, pastebin, and more. It supports vim, emacs, and others. Makes life much easier. Personally, I use the vim mode.

    Nothing quite like having an IDE tell me it loves me each morning.

    - shazow