Eclipse in Action

Simon P. Chappell writes "The Eclipse IDE has thundered into the collective consciousness of Java developers since its release by IBM as Open Source Software. Up until this time, the majority of available documentation at the Eclipse website has been for plug-in developers, with scant attention given to the rest of us that actually want to use the tool for anything else. This book restores the balance and brings much needed help to those interested in this IDE." Read on for the rest of Simon's review, about which he says "Full Disclosure: I received a free, review copy of this book, so feel free to assume that I've been bought off and have traded my technical integrity to put about an inch of dead tree on my shelf."

Eclipse in Action
author	Gallardo, Burnette and McGovern
pages	383 (15 page index)
publisher	Manning
rating	8
reviewer	Simon P. Chappell
ISBN	1930110960
summary	A good book that lives up to its name.

Overview

With a book like this it's difficult to know where to pitch the level. Do you aim for the lowest common denominator or do you assume some experience on the part of your reader? This book seems to have pitched itself well, not pandering to the absolute Java newbie, not afraid to get down into the code and yet gentle enough that newer Java developers can follow easily. The heavyweight chapter on writing plug-ins is at the back where it shouldn't frighten those of a sensitive nature.

The book is divided into two sections. The first and largest section concerns actual use of Eclipse during Java application development. The second section is for those who wish to write plug-ins for Eclipse.

The book takes a very 'Test Driven Development' approach to Java development and this shows in the manner that Eclipse is presented and taught. Emphasis is given to the tools that come with Eclipse, especially Ant, Junit and the CVS client. For those already skilled in these tools, this might seem like filler, but remember that there are still pitifully few Java developers using even these simple and free tools. My hat is off to the authors for their TDD evangelism, skillfully disguised as Eclipse usage instruction.

What's To Like

I liked the progression followed in the book, first teaching the basic operation of Eclipse and then moving on to the tools that come with the base install.

What's To Consider

Some may consider that the material on Ant, Junit and CVS is filler. The 'Test Driven Development' theme may be a little too much evangelism for some.

I use Eclipse on a Mac OS X box and I felt that there was very little discussion concerning the cross-platform attributes of the tool. All of the screenshots were from a Microsoft Windows build of the software; a Linux or OS X screenshot would have been helpful.

One more niggle and then I'm done. There is no information on using Eclipse with other programming languages (a couple of paragraphs in the introduction chapter doesn't really count). I've recently started tinkering with Ruby and have used a Ruby plug-in to allow me to work within Eclipse as I learn the language. This is a wonderful testament to the power and extensibility of Eclipse.

Summary

This is a good book. You know it's a good book when you already use the tool (both pure Eclipse and IBM's WSAD) regularly and you find yourself learning things that you had not previously been aware of. If you are working with Java and want a good free IDE that's going to grow with you, then Eclipse is a tool you should try -- and consider this book the User's Guide that would have been in the box if Eclipse came shrink-wrapped.

Table Of Contents

1. Using Eclipse
2. 1. Overview
   2. Getting started with the Eclipse Workbench
   3. The Java development cycle: test, code, repeat
   4. Working with source code in eclipse
   5. Building with Ant
   6. Source control with CVS
   7. Web development tools
3. Extending Eclipse
4. 1. Introduction to Eclipse plug-ins
   2. Working with plug-ins in Eclipse

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You can purchase Eclipse in Action from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

best ide ?

[ramzak2k]

Eclipse is easily the best IDE i have ever used - especially for java compared to other bloatwares for development like
JBuilder/Netbeans/ Visual Age for Java. IMO, it is also the most easiest one to get familiar with. I have used IBM tools like Visual Age For java & Visual Age for CPP and boy, where they a pain to get started on.

This page [eclipse.org] has all the shortcuts in the IDE- valuable time savers :)

get down to the nitty gritty.

[mark_lybarger]

i've got this book as well as the slightly outdated netbeans book from oreilly. the netbeans book is miles better than the eclipse book. the eclipse book definately reads like an ibm type book. there are not enough pictures and walk throughs as there are explaining every single widget/button/option in extreme wordy detail.

the netbeans was an overall easy read and got the user quickly familiar with the parts of the ide they needed to use.

i'm a heavy eclipse user during my day job mainly b/c i think it's slightly nicer on win32, and i like the debugger more than netbeans. eclipse also seems to require slightly memory footprint and since i haven't yet convinced my manager that having more than 384MB of memory for a java development ide and running a local wl server is absolutely necessarry for maintaining some level of sanity, i'm using what works best for me. at home on a linux platform, i prefer netbeans just because it looks and feels nicer. the gtk+ on linux isn't as nice as the native java look and feel. just my personal preferance.

I'd like to weigh in ...

[B3ryllium]

I dislike the way that Eclipse seems to handle projects.

I work on multiple projects at once, sometimes projects have sub-projects, and none of them are located on my local machine. The way Eclipse handles them is ... less than desirable, in my experience.

What I really like about Eclipse is the PHP addon, with its function/class outline view. I just wish that, if projects were properly implemented, that the addon would be able to outline all of the functions in the entire project. Now THAT would be cool.

Eclipse 3.0 new features

[fatarfy]

Here are the new features from the Eclipse 3.0 Milestones 1 and 2.
Got these links off blogdex [blogdex.net] this morning.

Milestone 1: http://download.eclipse.org/downloads/drops/S-M1-2 00306051737/eclipse-news-M1.html [eclipse.org]
Milestone 2: http://download2.eclipse.org/downloads/drops/S-3.0 M2-200307181617/eclipse-news-M2.html [eclipse.org]

I use WSAD and Eclipse 2.0 regularly. WSAD's (Based on Eclipse 1.0) java editor is weak, but the editor in Eclipse 2.0 is among the best I have ever used.

Re:best ide ?

[pacman on prozac]

I think you could be right, since I use it for completely different thing and am hooked.

Everyday for the last 6 months I am on eclipse + one [xored.com] of the few [sourceforge.net] PHP plugins along with the ftp plugin from eclipse.org for developing websites. Theres even a few SQL plugins if you're that way inclined (plug a shedload more [2y.net]). Lots of time saved and I can share projects between my work winxp system and linux at home since both run eclipse.

The only things that can match all these features (last time I looked anyway) cost at least a few hundred dollars, and didn't impress me as much as eclipse did.

It also runs very fast for me, completely useable on my old 400mhz system.

Randolpho, theres a few drag/drop plugins on that 2y.net site, might do what you want.

Not Bloatware?

[sparkhead]

Have you compared Eclipse's resource footprint to JBuilder/Netbeans/VA Java? It's more bloated.

I've been a regular user of VA-Java/Smalltalk for years, and Eclipse uses a lot more resources and is missing many features the Envy-based repositories have.

Re:best ide ?

[s88]

1) Yes there is (if i understand what you mean).

Expand a java element in the Package Explorer View. Drag and drop it to where you want (eg another class). Eclipse does all the needed refactoring for you.

2) No visual GUI editor. This is available for a price, though. I just wish it were free. :(

I'll agree this is lacking, but take a look at some of the plugins:
Eclipse GUI plugins [2y.net]
And specifically: Assisi [assisiplugins.com]

Scott

Possible reason for no Drag and Drop

[Necroman]

Drag and drop has not been fully implemented for all platforms yet. Since the Eclipse GUI is built upon SWT (which spawned from Eclipse), SWT must support Drag and Drop. Currently it is not supported on all OSes that Eclipse runs on.

If you head over to the SWT development page [eclipse.org] you will notice that Linux/gtk, MacOS and QNX all still need Drag and drop to be implemented. I know for MacOS, Drag and drop will be in Eclipse/SWT 3.0

Re:Web Development?

[Natty P]

Definitely possible...

JBoss has JBossIDE [jboss.org], a set of plugins for running JBoss and related stuff in Eclipse.

MyEclipseIDE [myeclipseide.com] looks like it offers a plugin that supports several app servers, if you join for $30/year.

Plus, WSAD [ibm.com] (WebSpere Studio Application Developer) is basically just Eclipse with plugins to run WebSphere.

Re:non-Java

[mughi]

Yes. C/C++ IDE [eclipse.org]

Cobol [eclipse.org]

Thos are just a couple of the official ones off hand. There are others floating around out there, including some commercial solutions.( XML/JSP/HTML support [sourceforge.net], XMLBuddy [xmlbuddy.com] ... )

For those like me...

[Aanallein]

...who'd never heard of this IDE before, and always want screenshots to quickly judge for themselves if something is worth a further look:
screenshot 1 [ometer.com], screenshot 2 [ometer.com], screenshot 3 [ometer.com]. (They're kinda old, so undoubtedly this thing has evolved quite a bit further since then.)

Re:Are they reinventing the wheel ?

[Jack Greenbaum]

I try not to reply to trolls, but I've got to spread some good news for my fellow EMACS brethren who have been been looking for a modern development environment that has few compromises coming from EMACS. I can say that Eclipse is the first IDE with EMACS bindings that I've felt comfortable with. The EMACS key bindings actually work, and work well. For example you can set the mark then move the point. Compare this to other commercial IDEs that consider substituting cntl-w for cntl-x as "EMACS mode", even though you still must select the text with the mouse.

But wait, there's more! With eclipse the EMACS work style that I use is even better than in EMACS because dabrevs (alt-/) work much better. In eclipse dabrevs are not just a textual expansion as in EMACS, rather it is context sensitive based on the jars you have in your class path as it should be in an Jave IDE. Say what you want about Visual Basic, but M$FT got this right a long time ago.

Of course we had all of this in ZMACS on the Symbolics back in the 80's, but what goes around comes around ...

-- Jack

IBM uses Eclipse as a basis

[Watts]

..for what I believe is their current flagship Java development tool, WebSphere Studio Application Developer. [ibm.com]

WSAD is a lot bulkier than Eclipse, and integrates strongly with WebSphere for debugging. It also includes a lot more project types than Eclipse, although there are some Eclipse plugins that add similar functionality.

Re:Are they reinventing the wheel ?

[captredballs]

Yeah, but it still isn't emacs.

There is a combination of an eclipse plugin and an emacs mode that allows you so used emacs as an external editor. It isn't perfect, particularly in that it crashes emacs sometimes, but it really improves my dev env, since I can use the editor I'm most comfortable in while still being able to take advantage of eclipse.

jde-eclipse/RemoteEclipse [raffael.ch]

Re:Python???

[mughi]

A quick Google search [google.com] came up with Eclipse-plugins.2y.net [2y.net] which in turn gives us language plugins for Eclipse [2y.net].

Down under 'p' is.... PyEclipse [sourceforge.net]

the other book met my needs much better

[bojolais]

Heavyweight chapter on plug-in development? The Java Developer's Guild to Eclipse (Sherry Shavor, Jim D'Anjou, Dan Kehn, Scott Fairbrother, John Kellerman, Pat McCarthy) has a far better section (over half the book) on plug-in development. From what I can tell, the tutorial section of the book is well-done, though I haven't spent much time with it.

If you've ever used Eclipse, I'd recommend the other book. If you're completely new to Eclipse, check out the included tutorials. They're surprisingly well-done.

Re:I'd like to weigh in ...

[Earlybird]

• HomeSite creates a project file (projectname.apf) in the top folder of the project. It contains a complete list of all the files in the project, and can organize it either by physical folders

This is analogous to how Eclipse does things. Each project is a separate entity. A project can link to different parts of the file system ("virtual" folders), potentially allowing files to be shared between multiple projects. And you can define filters (working sets in Eclipse terminology) that determine what's shown in the UI. Switching between working sets is a one-click operation.

Based on these similarities, I don't see how your description sufficiently describes any way in which HomeSite is a superior product; there must be something else here that you're not telling us.

• Although I really do like the PHP function outline feature. :)

There's a PHP outline in Eclipse?

Re:GUI editor

[Michael Crutcher]

Actually Eclipse does include a GUI SWT editor. If you install the example plugins the SWT editor is included as one of the examples.
Granted, its not a full feature editor. But it allows you to quickly lay out all of the components and generate the SWT. I use it and it saves quite a bit of time.

Re:IBM uses Eclipse as a basis

[valkraider]

I have been using WSAD for more than a year now. I would actually advise against it, our experience has been that it is really really slow - especially with large codebases. It is also a bit buggy, and I dislike that it hides too many details from the developers - but then when they break it is almost impossible to track down and fix. WSAD does not like ANY manual editing of important files related to EJBs and such. We currently have almost 20 developers using WSAD and regret our choice. Especially the code migration / porting projects.

Just one opinion though, YMMV. We currently have a few tickets open with IBM that they can't seem to resolve - that work fine in WebLogic and SilverStream and JBoss environments.

This is all under windows, I have no experience with WSAD under linux.

Re:Web Development?

[LauraW]

MyEclipseIDE [myeclipseide.com] looks like it offers a plugin that supports several app servers

I've been using MyEclipseIDE for the last few weeks, and it's a great plugin. The best feature is the automagic JSP debugging with servers that support JSR-045 like Tomcat 5. I'm eagerly awaiting the new version that is supposed to ship tomorrow, because there are lots of new features like XDoclet support. I think they're adding some EJB tools too, but I'm just doing JSPs, Servlets, Struts, etc, so I haven't looked too closely. I had tried other J2EE plugins before: Lomboz, Sysdeo, etc, but this one is definitely easier to use. The others require you to play all sorts of tricks in order to do JSP debugging.

The MyEclipseIDE folks have an interesting business model. As I understand it, they're sort of "mining" the huge number of open-source plugins out there, taking the good bits, and integrating them into a suite with a clean UI. (And even writing tests and documentation. :-) I'm certainly willing to pay them $30/year for that. I just hope they manage to survive.

Laura

Re:netbeans vs eclipse

[Knight2K]

Eclipse 2.1 has added the feature of being able to integrate external (that is, not actually under the project directory on disk) folders and files into a project.
I have only used NetBeans briefly at JavaONE, but from what I saw, Eclipse's feature seems similar.

Syntax checking as you write the code

[Canis Latrans]

One of the most impressive features that I have seen in Eclipse, and a couple of other Java IDEs (CodeGuide for instance) is the ability to parse the code as you are typing it, and report all compiler errors to you (by underlining the problems in red), before you actually do a full compile.

To me, this feature seems revolutionary. I after discovering it, I had a hard time going back to coding C++ where no such tools exist (to my knowledge). I am always surprised that not many Java programmers seem to know or care about this kind of on-the-fly syntax checking. Coding is much more fun when you can be aware of your mistakes the moment you make them, rather than having to go back and fix them all after you've already forgotten what you were thinking.

SWT and GCG

[kupci]

Check out this article on SWT and GCG: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library /j-nativegui2/