Eclipse Ide

Home: http://www.eclipse.org

Download: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/index.php

Wiki: http://eclipsewiki.swiki.net (on the SwikiFarm)


At its core, out of the box:


And then there's the Eclipse Platform on which the Ide runs...

The Eclipse Platform is an open framework and toolkit for building IDE's (just like Mozilla isn't a web browser but a web platform). Eclipse itself consists of a set of core technologies (a windowing API that works the same on Linux and Windows and a few other useful bits and pieces) a core Java Development Toolkit, and what is called the Plugin Development Kit. You can build "plugins" in either Java or other technologies (integration with ActiveX and COM is included) which can interact with each other through standard, published ExtensionPoints. It is the foundation for IBM's new commercial IDE, known as WebSphereStudioApplicationDeveloper.

Eclipse is open source under the CommonPublicLicense version 0.5 (as of November 8, 2001).


Now Eclipse supports two languages sets - Java (which comes with it) and C/C++ (http://www.eclipse.org/tools/index.html). I've been playing around with the C/C++ IDE a bit over the holidays and it's a reasonable front-end to GNU C++. Even though they say it's only officially for Linux, I've been using it on Windows 2000 with only a few problems. I've been using MINGWIN32 for my GNU tools suite to sit beneath Eclipse. About the only thing I've not been able to do yet is to write a DLL for integration with Java (my whole reason for doing this) but that's mostly due to my inexperience with GNU C++. With a bit more work this will be fully as capable as Visual C++ and a lot cheaper :) --KyleBrown

The core philosophy behind Eclipse is "Everything is a plugin," as inspired by VisualStudio.

it is an open framework and toolkit for building IDE's

It don't think it's only useful for building IDEs. You can take out all IDE-ish parts, as they're only plugins, and have a complete application framework for complex tasks. The extension point strategy is very concise and expressive. I had my first plugin running in minutes. -- ManuelSimoni


I saw this running at LondonXpDay. I liked it so much I tried to install it at home. (Normally I'm immune to the tool hype.) I tried to install it under Windows98 - all I got was a splash screen that seemed to hang. (I don't expect 100% of installs to work seamlessly, but some sort of error message would be nice.) There doesn't seem to be any documentation about what you're supposed to do if it won't launch. Do I really have to start debugging it?

-- DafyddRees

Dafydd, I also had this problem when I grabbed the latest version of Eclipse. Its because Eclipse doesn't ship with a JRE but the launcher is a win exe that hangs if Eclipse doesn't start (they really should sort that). You can download a 1.3.x runtime from the Eclipse website or use another JDK if you use the appropriate command line arguments. ChanningWalton

Problem fixed - I posted the details on the eclipse newsgroup. Within a day, I had the answer: install a more recent version of the Java 2 SDK. That fixed the problem. This is a great IDE - it only took a few hours to get productive and I even have enough memory left over do useful things. --DafyddRees

A general way to debug startup errors is to run eclipse from the command line (in the eclipse directory) with java -cp startup.jar org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main

This method reported to me that a certain dll did not have the proper permissions (Windows 2000) -- Mark Miller

We use Eclipse for our every-day development. Importing our existing code was no problem (several thousand classes). It works allright, though we had to drop the spectacular integration with CVS (no, it is really great) because of performance problems. (you might want to check a recent build, they've been making improvements :) )

We're quite happy with it, it is usefull and the price is right ;-). I hope to see a MacOsx version soon.

--AlexVanDenBergh

The MacOsx port is available now. --ChanningWalton


There's a PythonPluginForEclipse, http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyeclipse/ . As of today (13th Aug. 2002), it's only version 0.0.1, but already good enough to edit with syntax highlighting and to run your programs.
Recommended plugin... look up a package with the name "Editor Enhancements", and install the Emacs plugin... I only use the completion command from it, but it adds a lot to eclipse. Don't get me wrong, the code completion built into eclipse is great, they really serve different purposes, the built in one is more 'global', more 'smart', the emacs one is quicker, and you tend to have many happy accidents (it searchs for all matches, in all open editors, and including matches starting partway through a word)

-- WilliamUnderwood

Here is a link to the Editor Enhancements package: http://lunar-eclipse.sourceforge.net/


May be a stupid question: is there a smalltalk plugin for eclipse?

I don't think the question is stupid, as there are plugins for a whole number of languages, but the answer seems to be "no" at the moment.

At OOPSLA this year, there was a presentation on Eclipse. There, some guys (from IBM, I believe) gave a short demo of their eclipse-smalltalk work. It wasn't prime time, but they demonstrated that they were able to write and run a tiny smalltalk program using eclipse. The downside is that they were using a proprietary smalltalk component instead of an open one, like SqueakSmalltalk. --EricHerman


The only thing I find missing in Eclipse (v2.1) is global regex search and replace, there is only global find (Ctrl-H) but no replace, Find/Replace (Ctrl-F) only works in a single file.

It's there, but it's hard to find. Do a global find (Ctrl-H); then, in the search results window, you'll see "Replace" in the context menu (right-click).

Otherwise, depending on what you are trying to do, one of the refactoring functions which will make the changes in a semantically meaningful way might work for you. Refactor->Rename...

3.0 stream adds regex in replacements (search regex have been available for some time, but the ability to use matches in the replacement is fairly recent).


Q. How does one print with line numbers? It seems that one can make line numbers appear on the screen but cannot print out the file with the numbers included. Is this a missing feature or a user error?

A. It is a missing feature. See http://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=19602#c2

Not to be whiny, but WHY are they still putting this feature off? Most of us probably work in environments where we do code reviews, and line numbers are pretty essential, aren't they?


Q. Can you hide directories from being displayed in the left window? I have several data directories, which I never examine with EclipseIde, cluttering things up.

A. Yes, you can. In the Java perspective, package explorer window, click the Menu arrow and select "Filters...". You can do the same in the Resource perspective's Navigator view. Is there some other view in Eclipse where the folders show up that you'd like them to be hidden?


Q. Can you keep your source external or do you need to import it into a project?

A. Yes, you can keep it external (since the 3.0 stream).


Q. Can you edit code externally (say with vi) and then recompile in Eclipse?

A. Yes, just refresh the directory where you edited the code so that Eclipse knows that it has changed. The latest versions can detect changes automatically, although I'm not sure it will trigger a rebuild.


See also: NetBeans, JavaIde, ForteForJava, IntellijIdea, EclipseVsIdea, EclipseEditor, JavaObjectMapTraversal
CategorySoftwareTool, CategoryFramework
EditText of this page (last edited July 8, 2004)
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