Eclipse is one powerful IDE. I've been using it for a few weeks and in this article, I will be reviewing a few of the features that make it such a wonderful tool.
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Great, informative article, but is any of this specific to 3.0M8, or even 3.0?
Every feature you mentioned could be implemented as a VIM macro. No need for Eclipse.
I haven't looked into Eclipse yet, but I'd like to thank you for the good article.
i.e. automate by using information in you existing class.
I have a plugin that will digest you project classes into a velocity context so you can use that information to generate other context.
This is great for automating ActionForms, web forms, WebWork actions or other things that a based on using existing information from "Your" beans.
http://www.sutternow.com/CodeStuff/velomix/
sample webwork2 template
http://www.sutternow.com/CodeStuff/velomix/samples/webwork2params.v...
Reformist: This is what happens when you write too late at night. Yes, the version is 3.0M8. But I think some of this is also applicable to 2.1.
dano: yes, I could do it with Vim. But building the macros in Vim and testing them all is much longer. With Eclipse, it just works.
L
And when you read too early in the morning, you don't pay attention to the title of the article... :-)
L
Eclipse is turning out to be the only reason many coders bother downloading the JRE at all. Bravo to the team for developing what is without a doubt a kick-ass tool that is not a toy.
Eclipse is becoming the new emacs, an editing platform easily adaptable to new tasks. It would be nice if it was as easy to just edit an old text file though, perhaps too much of a focus on project-oriented work.
I have never used an IDE before I used Eclipse. Since download Eclipse I have tried others just for the heck of it (NetBeans, IntelliJ, Borland and even VS.NET for my C# stuff at work). Eclipse is by far and away my favorite.
The only thing that I hate,and I mean hate, about Eclipse is that it does not have Code Folding or Code Collapsing as other IDE's do. VS.NET has it, IntelliJ has it...why can't Eclipse?
Anyone know of a plugin to do this, btw? If so, that would rock, but this should be something that is built in.
Anyway...Eclipse is pretty awesome. I do almost all my dev in it now.
jason
For Java I use http://www.Netbeans.orgthe only thing bothering me is that it only supports Java and jPython. What other languages does Eclipse support if any?
Eclipse supports almost any language. It does this through plugins
http://eclipse-plugins.2y.net/
I do PHP, Python, XML, Mono, Perl, HTML, Java, and some SQL in it.
jason
On the cold folding, I believe I read on another site that it's coming into the 3.0.x series. I'll try to find the link.
As to Eclipse, it is one of the killer applications, the must haves, for me. When I first tried it out I was not so excited, thought it was a bit cumbersome. That was simply not knowing the product. A lot of the beauty of Eclipse though is the plugin architecture. If you have a feature or extension you wish you had, odds are someone's already created it.
These two sites list plugins made by others: http://www.eclipse-plugins.info/eclipse/index.jsp and http://www.eclipse-workbench.com/jsp/plugins.jsp
A discussion on one of the plugin vendor sites, http://www.myeclipseide.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&... , mentions cold folding being mostly complete but not running in M8 - and most likely turned on in M9.
Here's another interesting bit on the plugin front, Mozilla is apparently going to release an XUL builder for Eclipse. http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=4414
The author barely mentioned the support for refactoring, which was largely copied from IntelliJ IDEA.
I wander how long will it take to replicate this effort using VIM macro, if at all possible.
Harel
Do you mean code folding, or is this a variant of it? If so, that sounds like a really nice feature. Very handy when I need to focus on just part of a project (as implemented in VS.NET anyway).
The CDT provides a complete C/C++ development environment for Eclipse as well. It is what QNX, LynxWorks, WindRiver, TimeSys, RedHat and others are using for the basis of their C/C++ IDE offerings.
http://www.eclipse.org/cdt/
With jde for emacs, you can set up those templates with all the niceties of cusomize-variable. There are also several refactoring tools available for emacs.
My biggest complain bout Eclipse: I can't have multiple editor windows going. Tabs are fine but I prefer to have multiple windows most of the time. For example, I have like 4 shell+vi windows open usually when I code.
Anyone know of any tricks for multi-editor window?
If there is an application worth buying, it is IntelliJ IDEA. It is an unbelievable piece of work. However, for people who hack with Java in their spare time, Eclipse is God sent. Eclipse is one of those projects that gives me hope for open source projects. It is an examplary model I feel many open source should emulate.
If you have not already tried kdevelop, it will stand out on its own merits.. but if your a vim user, then you should definitely try the kvim texteditor kpart.
Thanks for the link...I am starting to get really excited about that.....
Thanks
crypt0 - You can drag the tabs around and put them beside or below other editors. Basically lets you re-arange your editors within the editor area like you do views within the workbench window.
root - The reason why Eclipse is so good is because it wasn't started as an open-source project. It is an IBM product that IBM open-sourced. The VisualAge/WebSphere products prior to eclipse where all based on the same code base. It also has a very strong internal management scheme due to the fact that most of the contributors are paid by eclipse member companies to work on it. We (QNX) have 3-4 full time people working on the CDT, for example.
After reading this article, Randy Faust, one of the Eclipse developers, did something I should have done while writing the article: he logged a bug and provided a patch for the getter/setter templates. This patch allows one to insert the name of the method in the generated documentation. The bug is here:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=58061
I deliberately chose not to talk about other Eclipse features (such as plugins and refactoring). I'll keep those for a later article, once I have enough material to cover those aspects.
I'm not an emacs fan, except for Ctrl-E and Ctrl-A. :-)
Once the XUL plugin is available, I hope to get a chance to try it out and report. Of course, I'd need to master XUL a bit beforehand...
L
I love people that bash something that is open source. Coz they will say something like, "Well **** does not support ****" and then the next release will have it, unless *** was a dumb idea. I really do not see the point of bashing good OSS ???
Code folding and generic templates are in the plan: http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/%7Echeckout%7E/pla...
You can also use 'Show source of selected element only' combined with the Java Browsing perspective to give you a visual age L&F.
As for refactoring and IntelliJ, after using intelliJ I went back to Eclipse because its refactoring was better in the 3.0 stream - try it out.
Tear off windows are now available and you have always been able to open more windows with complete perspectives in them.
Channing
Not every open source project has the backing of IBM, which recently contributed $40m dollars for Eclipse project.
Laurent,
Excellent article! Columns like yours do a great job of pointing out one facet of a topic and giving it the space it needs to be properly understood. Also, introducing templates and macros in the context you mentioned made it easier to see how and when they should be used.
Great job!
Carlos