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Picking the Right Eclipse Distribution
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?"
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
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
Why worry about a 300MB download? Is this 1995?
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.
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.
I agree with your assessment, and I really do like eclipse. The bloat isn't too bad when you consider the trade-off of flexibility; on any given day, being a software development major with an internship, I may be using any one or more of 4 OSes, and any number of flavors thereof. I may also be using any one of several desktops between school, home, and work. Furthermore, I may be using any number of languages.
Eclipse is the only IDE that I've found that can work across all these scenarios, and leave me with the same IDE across multiple languages. I don't have to worry about remembering the layout of multiple IDEs for each language or OS, and that makes me more productive. I install the plugins that I need (YOXOS, FTW!), and I can drop the eclipse directory on a network share, USB drive, or live CD and have the same environment everywhere I go. Every computer has a JRE installed these days. Also, each summer they do an incredible job of releasing multiple projects on the same day. The built in debugger is great, too. I've yet to find a better way to debug multi-threaded apps. Finally, you can specify, at launch, the memory parameters for the IDE via the normal JRE flags (-xmms, -xmlimit, etc.) if you aren't on such a beefy machine. But then again, if you're developing and debugging any language 'higher' than c/c++ these days, your sanity will depend on having a fairly beefy machine. Especially if you want to have firefox open on one screen and your IDE open in another (although, you can open firefox in Eclipse if you haven't the extra screen real estate).
It's unfortunate that the in crowd, armed with mostly FUD and occasional actual arguments, has decided that Eclipse is 'teh sux0rz'. I've yet to find many people who can put up much of an argument against Eclipse that doesn't center around; "Java is slow" (1996 wants their troll back, modern JITs are nearly as fast as native machine code), "it's ugly" (right, does it work?), "it uses too much memory" (ok, have you bothered to change your JRE memory settings?), "it's a huge download" (without JRE the base download is less than 100 MB), "dependency chasing sucks" (true, have you tried YOXOS?), "I'd prefer emacs" (I prefer vi, but you won't catch me writing or debugging a high level language in it). To each his own, but Eclipse is a great IDE if you give it a shot.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
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...
I'm an infovore...
I was an avid user of eclipse for about 3 years. I'd say avid user _and_ advocate!
Then I got sick of the direction it took around 3.1 release. Here are they in no specific order:
* No direction sense in platform development: Eclipse was supposed to be an application development platform. However, it seemed the Eclipse foundation was eager to include each and every requirement of its members (the big names!). The platform became a mess that I just can't figure out how to update my code to 3.x line. The documentation was _pathetic_ and things just don't work.
* The documentation SUCKS: Did I mention it already ? Did I mention that most of it either just doesn't exist or hasn't been updated for 3.x ? Did I mention that the members mostly try to make money around "training" people in it ?
* The plugin nightmare: The plugin and update system just doesn't work! Yes there are a lot of plugins available, but trying to keep track of them and their dependencies is a nightmare. Some plugin needs GEF 2.1 an other needs 2.3. The dependency hell was unmanageable. Mostly it was like that - I would create an installation and once I got it working "somehow", I wouldn't touch it! Updating it would really mean creating another eclipse installation and mucking about there till I got things "right" and only then switching to it.
* J2EE Support - rather the lack of it: MyEclipse was best then. It sucked.
I went there just yesterday, and for life of me couldn't figure out why they split it into so many distros... and over that if I need a GUIDE to tell me what is right for me - well they're not doing it right then!
I tried Netbeans 6 once. Now with Netbeans 6.1 - It's just perfect. It *just* works and DOES NOT nag me! When I'm doing my work I want my tools to work right.
Play when playtime, work when time to work! Netbeans 6.1 fits that *perfectly*. Oh, that and the jVi plugin for netbeans which provides "optional" Vi/Vim mode for Netbeans editor and I'm just set.
Did I mention that Netbeans is best when it comes to J2EE/Web development ?
- mritunjai
I kept reading the comment, but my brain stalled out halfway through converting all the acronyms.
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