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Java Books Media Programming Book Reviews

Eclipse in Action 247

Posted by timothy from the bring-welder's-goggles dept.
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
    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
    1. Introduction to Eclipse plug-ins
    2. Working with plug-ins in Eclipse

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.
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Eclipse in Action More

Eclipse in Action

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  • best ide ? (Score:5, Informative)

    by ramzak2k ( 596734 ) * on Monday July 21, 2003 @01:31PM (#6491824)
    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 :)

    • Re:best ide ? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Randolpho ( 628485 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @01:37PM (#6491881) Homepage Journal
      I agree.... Eclipse is the best IDE, hands down. It lacks a few key features, however:

      1) No drag/drop editing. This really is a must, and I can't think of why they haven't bothered with it.

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

      • Re:best ide ? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mark_lybarger ( 199098 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @01:52PM (#6492019)
        dnd editing? i find myself finding every way possible to stay away from that mouse. you can copy and paste methods, classes using eclipse, but yes, dnd i haven't really found (or looked for).

        if you need a gui editor, then use netbeans. it has an excellent gui editor and is free. if eclipse is the hammer, then gui editing is not a nail...

      • Re:best ide ? (Score:2)

        by ramzak2k ( 596734 ) * on Monday July 21, 2003 @01:56PM (#6492056)
        good point on the drag and drop editing - never noticed that missing feature ! :)

        on GUI editors, am yet to see any Java GUI editor that is as good as the one Microsoft has in Visual Studio - drag, drop & get stuff done.
        It has one clean interface where anything related to GUI element can be dealt with.
        Jbuilder came close, but even on that using a basic elements such as table required getting into the generated code and doing many of the necessary modification manually. I eventually settled for writing all the code myself in eclipse to avoid the partial code/partial generated code situation.

      • Re:best ide ? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by profet ( 263203 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @02:06PM (#6492148)
        Personally I like IntelliJ IDEA [intellij.com].

        It's not free...but I don't think I could go back to Eclipse.

        IDEA definatlly is the best Java IDE out there.

        • Re:best ide ? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by los furtive ( 232491 ) <ChrisLamotheNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday July 21, 2003 @02:26PM (#6492358) Homepage
          Hear! Hear!

        • Re:best ide ? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by thrice ( 253465 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @03:47PM (#6493301)
          I'm definitely on board w/ this. I was an active user of Eclipse for about 8 months, and after trying out IDEA i switched and left Eclipse behind. Soon afterwards, my entire company followed and we all now use IDEA.

          One of my biggest complaints with Eclipse was the inability to open a file or compile to a directory outside of the project workspace. Additionally, i found the refactoring to be slow when compared to IDEA.

          • Why... (Score:2)

            by natet ( 158905 ) on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @12:21AM (#6496622)
            Would you want to compile to a directory outside your workspace? When I create a Java project, I create a src directory, a build directory and a docs directory. I write source in the src directory, compile my code to the build directory. All these reside in my workspace in Eclipse Perhaps you didn't know you could do this in Eclipse?

            I have no baseline to compare refactoring to, since I have only used that feature to rename a method in Eclipse, and I haven't use refactoring in any other editor.

            I haven't tried Intellij, mostly because of the $499 price tag. I have a fundimental problem paying for an editor (especially that much!) when a perfectly good free alternative exists. I personally do most of my editing in jEdit, but I used Eclipse for a school project recently, and found it to be a very handy tool. If I was still doing commercial Java development, you can bet I would be using Eclipse. It didn't win a Java Pro Readers Choice award for nothing!

        • Re:best ide ? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by SpryGuy ( 206254 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @04:16PM (#6493634)
          I completely agree.

          Since I first used IntelliJ IDEA, I cannot go back to any other editor. And with each version, it keeps getting better and better. (I'm on the Early Access Program for the next version... just wait to you see what it has in store! Wow!)

      • GUI editor (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mughi ( 32874 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @02:09PM (#6492168)
        2) No visual GUI editor. This is available for a price, though. I just wish it were free. :(

        It could be that for a general experienced java programmer, GUI editors just don't work as well for Java. What with layouts, different ways to do things, etc., designing powerful UI code for Java is different than say for Win32 (and yes, I've done both). Personally, I'm faster just writing straight code from a logical standpoint instead of dragging in code from a physical one. It's a fairly common sentiment on comp.lang.java.* also.

        • Re:GUI editor (Score:2, Informative)

          by Michael Crutcher ( 631990 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @03:47PM (#6493305)
          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:GUI editor (Score:5, Interesting)

          by bay43270 ( 267213 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @06:01PM (#6494513) Homepage
          GUI editors don't work as well for Java because no one has done it right - yet. There is absolutly no reason Java GUI editing can't be as easy as it is in Visual Basic. Take a look at OS-X interface builder. It allows all the flexability of Java layout managament with a single layout (which is graphical AND easy to use). It also supports MVC by allowing drag and drop binding between components and listeners (very cool). What does Java have that makes it so much more complicated??? Nothing!

          BTW, Idea's next version will feature a GUI editor. It promises to be very clean. I don't know if it will catch on because it uses non-standard ideas such as byte code manipulation to keep the code clean. All layout is in XML (generated by the WYSIWYG editor) and the code only contains listeners and component references (even the references are optional if you don't have listeners on those components)

      • Re:best ide ? (Score:5, Informative)

        by s88 ( 255181 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @02:14PM (#6492213) Homepage
        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

        • Re:best ide ? (Score:2)

          by Randolpho ( 628485 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @02:22PM (#6492307) Homepage Journal
          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.
          Er... I meant Drag and Drop *text* editing; sorry if that was vague. There's lots of stuff I can drag and drop, but I can't hilite some text, drag it to another portion of the window/view I'm in (or even another view), and drop it there. Nor can I control-drop it to copy it there. Nearly every other text editor on the planet (except MS Notepad ;)) has that capability.

        • Re:best ide ? (Score:2)

          by Slime-dogg ( 120473 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @04:08PM (#6493539) Journal

          It seems that they have so many of them now. Why can't all of the devo's just work on one? They could label it "Eclipse GUI plugin" or something. It seems to me that there's a lot of energy going into a lot of projects in parallel, when one of the projects getting done faster would be more desireable.

      • Possible reason for no Drag and Drop (Score:4, Informative)

        by Necroman ( 61604 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @02:14PM (#6492218)
        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:best ide ? (Score:2)

        by CyberDong ( 137370 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @05:46PM (#6494410)
        To me, the feature I'd most like to see added is the ability to change the default line ending. If I'm working on a Windows machine, that doesn't mean I want CR/LF line endings in my code. It's should be a simple thing to add to the preferences, but they just haven't done it...

    • Re:best ide ? (Score:2, Informative)

      by pacman on prozac ( 448607 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @02:03PM (#6492121)
      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? (Score:4, Informative)

      by sparkhead ( 589134 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @02:05PM (#6492137)
      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 ? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by fruity_pebbles ( 568822 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @02:09PM (#6492171)
      The best Java IDE is IntelliJ IDEA [intellij.com], but it's not free.

      Having said that, Eclipse is pretty good, and much more pleasant to use than NetBeans.

    • Re:best ide ? (Score:2)

      by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @03:33PM (#6493164) Homepage Journal
      I disagree...

      Eclipse is the best IDE for its price.

      If the company is floating the bill, then JBuilder or IntelliJ are better IDEs (though they cost a fortune).

      Not a dis against Eclipse. Its a fine IDE, but JBuilder and IntelliJ just have more features to really speed up production (especially in the EJB department).

      • Re:best ide ? (Score:2)

        by MSBob ( 307239 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @11:32PM (#6496432)
        In what way is JBuilder or IDEA better than eclipse? Please give me a few examples instead of laundry lists of features. I always find myself more productive with eclipse than JBuilder. My shop used to be all JBuilder and now it is almost exclusively eclipse because that's what the developers wanted to use. As far as IDEA goes, it crashed right after I installed it on my office windows box. I tried it at home and ended up with the same result: crash on launch. It's pathetic. There is nothing out of the ordinary about my boxes except that they all use JDK 1.4.2

    • Re:best ide ? ...Nah (Score:2)

      by 2starr ( 202647 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @04:05PM (#6493512) Homepage
      If you haven't used IDEA from IntelliJ (www.intellij.com), I don't think you can say this. Seriously, I've used 'em all and was blown away by IDEA. Definitely worth a try.

    • Re:best ide ? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by msoori ( 614781 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @09:21PM (#6495696)
      Eclipse maybe good enough for a free IDE, but it didnt pass my standards of excellence to make me a convert!!! Eclipse is one of the worst IDEs I've used. I had been using CodeWarrior for ages and was looking for a cheap alternative because I didnt want to pay $400 for CodeWarrior, so kept on trying every IDE I could find, free and otherwise. Today, I still use CodeWarrior, despite its cost because it offers superior navigation capabilities than anything else around. And its a very well thought out UI that is not clumsy like most others. I can concentrate on the problem at hand instead worrying about file management. Its money well spent.

  • The website (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bigjnsa500 ( 575392 ) <bigjnsa500@ySTRAWahoo.com minus berry> on Monday July 21, 2003 @01:31PM (#6491825) Homepage Journal
    is already /.'ed... wonderful.... Mirror anybody?

  • Are they reinventing the wheel ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @01:32PM (#6491837)
    From the Eclipse page :

    Welcome to eclipse.org
    Eclipse is a kind of universal tool platform - an open extensible IDE for anything and nothing in particular.

    It's an EMACS clone then ?

  • Just remember (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21, 2003 @01:34PM (#6491853)
    Even during an Eclipse, it's still unsafe to look at Sun [sun.com].

  • get down to the nitty gritty. (Score:5, Informative)

    by mark_lybarger ( 199098 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @01:42PM (#6491930)
    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 ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by B3ryllium ( 571199 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @01:42PM (#6491935) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:I'd like to weigh in ... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mark_lybarger ( 199098 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @01:48PM (#6491981)
      you didn't specifically mention what it is about eclipse's project handling that you don't like. i would mention that you can generally organize your work such that it makes using the ide much easier. eclipse gives you the ability to exclude certain directories for each project.

      • Re:I'd like to weigh in ... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by B3ryllium ( 571199 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @02:36PM (#6492503) Homepage
        It's mostly just that I prefer the HomeSite method of project management.

        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, or by having virtual folders (sort of like symbolic links, I suppose). All of these .apf files are stored in the registry (eww, I know), and come up in a drop-down list so that users can instantly switch between projects. You can also define projects which concern a subset of an existing project. For instance, I have a "beryllium.ca" project and a "confuzzled" project, and the beryllium.ca project happens to include the confuzzled project (although aside from including the files, there is no special bond between them - at least, not in the project management software itself).

        That, and the difference in search/replace, and subtle text editing differences (drag and drop editing, for example), is why HomeSite is far more comfortable to me than Eclipse. Although I really do like the PHP function outline feature. :)

        • Re:I'd like to weigh in ... (Score:3, Informative)

          by Earlybird ( 56426 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMpurefiction.net> on Monday July 21, 2003 @03:30PM (#6493125) Homepage
          • 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:I'd like to weigh in ... (Score:2)

            by B3ryllium ( 571199 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @04:33PM (#6493782) Homepage
            I've only used Eclipse 2.0.2 - if what you say is true, I think it might be time to update :) The PHP outline is courtesy of the WebSphere plugin, afaik.

          • Re:I'd like to weigh in ... (Score:2)

            by B3ryllium ( 571199 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @05:03PM (#6494039) Homepage
            I've hit a catch-22 situation (after upgrading Eclipse), which the HomeSite methodology avoids.

            I cannot create "beryllium.ca" and "confuzzled" projects in Eclipse. Why? "C:\Internet\www\confuzzled and C:\Internet\www\ overlap".

            HomeSite doesn't have that problem.

            No, working sets don't help, as I cannot create a working set without first having defined a project. Therefore, catch-22.
            • Eclipse doesn't yet support true nested projects, and directories must not overlap. You can probably mess around with exclusions and make it work somehow, but I probably wouldn't do it personally. Splitting the project into two orthogonal directories sounds like a small sacrifice to make, though.

              A more appropriate candidate for nested projects, imho, is API/implementation/test separation, and other subset/layer dependency issues.

              For example, let's say your framework project has an interface package and an implementation package. The two packages should be compiled into two different JARs. Client applications should only depend on the interface package, through the interface JAR. Similarly, nobody probably needs the test package, so shouldn't need to link to it, but the test package needs the intf and impl packages, and should be compiled into its own JAR. If you have an internal plug-in system, you might want a fourth package for those interfaces/classes.

              With Eclipse you still can't do this, and you would have to divide the project into different projects, in this case intf, impl and test. You could do it easily with nested projects, however.

    • Re:I'd like to weigh in ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Samrobb ( 12731 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @01:59PM (#6492084) Journal
      I dislike the way that Eclipse seems to handle projects.

      Then let the team know.

      They're currently working on the 3.0 release for Eclipse - one of the topics discussed on the development mailing lists a while back was properly supporting sub-projects. The primary Eclipse team was asking users to submit information on how they would like to see Eclipse support nested projects. If you look through their bug database, you should be able to find the relevant bugzilla entries along with the attached discussions.

  • Eclipse 3.0 new features (Score:5, Informative)

    by fatarfy ( 319180 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @01:56PM (#6492055)
    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.

  • Fabulous! (Score:5, Funny)

    by jpsst34 ( 582349 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @01:58PM (#6492074) Journal
    Sure, Eclipse [wrigley.com] is good, but does it give your mouth a good clean feeling, no matter what [wrigley.com]?

  • Development Use (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @02:17PM (#6492246) Homepage
    Borland should be afraid. I develop java with Eclipse pretty much exclusively now, and if you're doing server-side java you don't really need anything else. Only thing I haven't figured out how to do is deploy EJB's like Jetace (I use Websphere). Anyone know? Can I export the EJB completely from within Eclipse?

    Back on track, check out this plugin: PMD [sourceforge.net]. It scans your classes for unused variables and a few other things. Some code our company paid for had literally hundred of unused strings in a class!

    • Re:Development Use (Score:2)

      by tcopeland ( 32225 ) * <tom&thomasleecopeland,com> on Monday July 21, 2003 @02:31PM (#6492426) Homepage

      And for a sample of what unused and duplicated code PMD has found in various SourceForge apps, check out the PMD scoreboard [sourceforge.net].

    • Re:Development Use (Score:2, Interesting)

      by hlee ( 518174 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @10:29PM (#6496078)
      Borland is certainly concerned.. when they discovered we weren't going to renew our JBuilder licenses with many of us going over to Eclipse, they sent down a product manager to give us a presentation. At the end of the day, it became especially clear to us that we certainly wouldn't fork out US$3000 or even 1000 for JUST an IDE. Instead, we're spending our budget on Together Control Center (which Borland acquired from TogetherSoft) licenses instead, which has superior round trip engineering to Rational Rose. I did try the free UML diagrammer from www.omondo.com - its not bad - but they're light years away from Together/Rose.

      At the end of the day, I wouldn't recommend paying much (or at all) for an IDE - especially with Eclipse around. Instead if you've a dozen or more developers, and have a technically competent manager, products like Together and Rose do add tangible benefits to the development process (esp. use-cases, class diagrams, sequence diagrams).

  • Screenshots? (Score:2)

    by luugi ( 150586 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @02:22PM (#6492308)
    I can't seem to find any.

  • How about JFACE? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by linuxlover ( 40375 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @02:29PM (#6492409) Homepage
    Most Eclipse books (there are only 2 I think) & tutorial are concentrated on developing plugins.

    Eclipse plugins are indeed cool. But what is lacking is good docs for developing stand alone JFace (equivalant of javax.swing) applications. SWT is much talked about being an alternative to Swing. but still, I don't see much documentation on developing stand alone applications.

    For example, I have a small Swing GUI program, size of my program jar is ~1M. I'd love to convert it to SWT/JFace. But I don't want to convert it into a plugin. Because then I'd have to distribute Eclipse work bench with it. The 'minimal' eclipse is around ~12M. So my distribution file size increased 10 fold!

    any pointers appreciated.
    thanks ./LL

  • For those like me... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Aanallein ( 556209 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @02:37PM (#6492514)
    ...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.)

  • IBM uses Eclipse as a basis (Score:3, Informative)

    by Watts ( 3033 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @03:03PM (#6492824)

    ..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:IBM uses Eclipse as a basis (Score:4, Informative)

      by valkraider ( 611225 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @04:17PM (#6493635) Journal
      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:IBM uses Eclipse as a basis (Score:2)

        by valkraider ( 611225 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @05:56PM (#6494475) Journal
        I just got off the phone with our IBM pre-sales-tech account manager guy. He said that WSAD 5.1 is due out very shortly. (He told me a date which I am not at liberty to disclose).

        He said that speed is the #1 complaint (it takes us 45 minutes to refresh/rebuild and another 45 to generate deploy/RMIC code).

        To anyone looking at WSAD - make sure to try it with large code sets if you can... And be aware that the WSAD User Interface is BULKY, Confusing, and takes a good amount of adjustment too.

  • the other book met my needs much better (Score:5, Informative)

    by bojolais ( 72005 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @03:30PM (#6493122) Homepage
    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.

  • Try Eclipse for CVS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Drakonian ( 518722 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @03:58PM (#6493414) Homepage
    Eclipse is a fantastic IDE, especially if you are a Java developer. There is a very active community as well, check into the Eclipse newsgroups if you have comments/questions.

    Even if you aren't a Java programmer, it may be worth having a look at Eclipse as a CVS client. Most graphical CVS clients rub me the wrong way. WinCVS is difficult to use and not intuitive. Try Eclipse - it actually lets you look at the projects on the repository and lets you view the resource history to compare any two files. The branching and mergeing features are very nice as well.

  • As I understand it Eclipse is a Java application. But on my Windows installation, Eclipse is started by double clicking a small exe file on my computer. I reckon this is a small stub file of some sort.

    Does anyone here know how to create exe files that'll start a Java application? Starting an application with an exe file is slightly more sexy than with a bat file (this may be a personal preference of mine, but still...).

    Some Java apps I've used, such as LimeWire, seems to be a binary exe file and perhaps a few DLL's, but not very much more. How are those created? From a distribution point of view it has to be great to not have to rely on the end user having installed the JRE.

  • Syntax checking as you write the code (Score:3, Informative)

    by Canis Latrans ( 634562 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @05:32PM (#6494263)
    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.

  • JBuilder is the only one (Score:2)

    by countach ( 534280 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @08:47PM (#6495512)
    Ok, it's a while since I used eclipse as well as IBM's Websphere developer, but both seemed to suck big time compared to JBuilder. Sure, they were better than Visual Age (blech!). But JBuilder, at least to me, seems super-well designed. It always seems to "just work", and do what I want. And when I want to do something new, it always seems intuitive. And the features are great, always seeming to get better in each new release.

    Don't get me wrong, if Eclipse is free, I can envisage one day switching. But as long as someone is willing to pay for JBuilder, forget it. I'll stick with JB.

    (No, I don't work for Borland! Just a big fan of this product!)

    • Re:JBuilder is the only one (Score:2)

      by nate1138 ( 325593 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @10:42PM (#6496144)
      I used to be the exact same way. Then one day, I tried IDEA and work has never been the same. Not free, but very cheap, and so close to JBuilder that there was pretty much no learning curve. And it has alot of the "Enterprise" features that Borland charges 2600 bucks for. Try it, you'll like it ;-)

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