Review: Eclipse 3.0 Milestone Build 2
Drew Falkman
Introduction
For the uninitiated, Eclipse (more info at eclipse.org) is an open source Java IDE. Eclipse has become the editor-of-choice for many developers for a number of reasons:
- It is highly extensible through a comprehensive plug-in architecture and many third-party plug-ins are readily available.
- The UI is based on a unique system that utilizes the OS of the developer's native UI toolset. (figure 1 shows the 3.0 M2 environment on Windows)
- It includes all of the important IDE features - projects, integrated debugging, code hints, etc.
- Many third-party IDE vendors (including IBM) use Eclipse as their underlying IDE - saving development time and allowing them to make a superior product that is easy to use.
- The environment is straightforward to setup, configure and use.
- Supports development of standard Java classes, JSPs, servlets, EJBs, etc.
- Overall, Eclipse is a fairly comprehensive IDE that is free while many of the larger vendors' Java IDEs are extremely expensive.
View Figure 1: the Eclipse 3.0 M2 workbench.
The current version 2.0 was released last summer and the current stable release (a stable release is generally what is recommended to download and install when using open source software) is 2.1.1. The upcoming 3.0 looks to contain a significant number of improvements and as of July 18th, milestone 2 (of 5 scheduled) has been available for download. The final version of Eclipse 3.0 is projected to be available in the second quarter of 2004.
Eclipse Overview
In order to evaluate Eclipse, it is important to understand the basic Eclipse paradigm, specifically the following concepts:
- Workspaces: the workspace is the uber view of everything in Eclipse. The workspace contains projects (see below), a history of changes, markers (for annotation of resources), build properties and settings information for the entire environment.
- Projects: a project consists of numerous resources that include JAR files, Java classes, etc. You can map projects to different directories throughout your network and you can have multiple projects within your workspace.
- Workbench: the workbench is the UI of Eclipse and contains windows that show the raw (albeit annotated, color-coded, etc) code, an outline of your code including methods and variables, resources, debug output and other necessary IDE information.
- JDT (Java Development Toolkit): the JDT portion of Eclipse contains all of the functionality that specifically refers to Java development within Eclipse (the Eclipse workspace could be customized to be an IDE for any development language - JDT is the Java and primary implementation).
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