Eclipse Makes Java Development on the Mac Easier 205
An anonymous reader writes "While the Java development environment is fully integrated into Mac OS X, the Eclipse developer IDE brings a fully integrated Java development environment to Mac OS X that provides a more consistent and easier to develop cross-platform experience. This article shows you how quickly you can be up and running with Eclipse and Java development on the Mac. 'Whether you're a Mac OS X Java developer working on cross-platform Java projects, a Linux developer switching to Mac OS X because of its UNIX-based core, or a general Java developer looking to develop applications targeted to Mac OS X, you'll want to look at the Eclipse IDE because it provides a solution to each of these development needs. While Mac OS X provides Xcode as its primary Java development IDE, Eclipse provides a more robust cross-platform development environment, with application frameworks for reporting, database access, communications, graphics, and more, and a rich-client platform framework for building applications.'"
I thought Slashdot was "News for nerds". (Score:4, Insightful)
Contradicting Itself? (Score:3, Insightful)
blazing new ground here, man (Score:2, Insightful)
* Textmate [macromates.com] / Netbeans [netbeans.org]
* Ruby [ruby-lang.org] (Rails [rubyonrails.org] or Merb [devjavu.com] for web programming)
* SVN or Git for source control
Re:Contradicting Itself? (Score:3, Insightful)
Eclipse is NOT new on Mac OS X (Score:3, Insightful)
SWT (Score:3, Insightful)
I've used both, and each have thier strengths.
Re:I'm curious why this is being pushed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a wild guess: Because there's too many CS and IT graduates who don't know how their favorite magical IDE works under the hood. They think it's über-complicated and scary to do development in a terminal using emacs/vi/nano and make/gcc/etc. Some of them have graduate degrees, and some of them teach.
Re:NetBeans?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm curious why this is being pushed... (Score:5, Insightful)
as a java dev, i can tell you my favourite feature of eclipse: no hidden magic.
all the concepts are the same once you have the ide up and running: you tell the compliler part of the ide where your source directories are, you point it at the libraries that you want to include on the build classpath, and it just compiles them into a directory.
change a file, it auto-compiles and spits the
then theres the added niceties of a really easy to use debugger, as well as the hot code-replace which lets you hit a break point mid way through a method, change some code _while the debugger is still running_, have it pop the stack back to the top of that method and step through the new code that you've just fixed.
try doing that with vim!
and of course all the readily available plugins to extend the function of the ide, a really clean UI, and make it completely free, and there you have it. when i was a boy, it was all Makefiles in each package directory hand crafted with a master Makefile descending into each subdirectory to complete a build. *shudders with the memory*
other ides, while also providing at least the bulk of the above, often tend to do things with hidden side files ( all of them have their own project metadata files ), or just 'automagically' do things for the user, but often this is to the detriment of not letting the developer understand what is happening as they write up their code.
Re:Uhh, Netbeans (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:blazing new ground here, man (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of us pick our tools according to the product we want to make, not according to what's hip and ultra cool right now.
PS: Thanks for comparing Eclipse with Textmate. Made my day.
Caught in a time warp? (Score:3, Insightful)
Did this story get caught in a time warp, or is the poster simply an Eclipse shill (and not a particularly good one)?
Eclipse has worked for years on OS X. So, for that matter, has NetBeans. They're both cross-platform and always have been.
ECLIPSE ADVERTISEMENT? (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Ported ????? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now admittedly I am not a Java Programmer, I am however a programmer, and as I understood Java's ENTIRE purpose in life it was to be a "Build it once, run it everywhere a JVM existed" environment where no platform dependencies existed.
There was no porting of your applications, there was simply copy it over there and it just ran. Things like SWING, AWT or whatever they call the framework this week, made sure that a java call for say an "About Box" was translated the the native UI engine for whatever platform it was running on. The programmer didn't have to even think about it, just call it.
So WHY does anything written in Java have to be "Ported"? It is because, at least in my opinion, Java has failed miserably at the most promising goal it aspired to.
Most Java apps are reasonably well behaved, the performance of most, well the best that can be said is that it is adequate but they just gulp resources like no tomorrow.
One day I will re-visit Java and see if it is any closer to its vaunted goal, but for today, it is at best "OK" for doing non GUI server side stuff, but for real GUI applications where the user experience really sells the application, I will stick with other tools that truly understand the notion for X-Platform.
Re:what nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason I can't use a Mac is that
1) it still does not support java 1.6 because Apple chooses to bundle new Java versions with new OS versions instead of distributing them separately like the rest of the world does. In practice that means there's up to 1 year or longer (as in this case) before new Java versions find their way onto the Mac.
Thas wrong, you can download Java 6 from "http://developers.apple.com"
4) eclipse has a long history of compatibility issues with Apple's Mac OS X UI Java bindings in their native code for SWT (i.e. this is a C portability issue, not a Java portability issue). It sort of works now but is not quite ideal.
That is only partly right, yes it had issues, but since 3 years Eclipse for Mac is more or less released simultaniously with the other versions.
Your points 2) and 3) are completely irrelevant (for me), why should I care wether Sun supports the Mac?
angel'o'sphere
Re:Ported ????? (Score:1, Insightful)
In any case, Eclipse figured "we could do better than that" and created the SWT, a widget toolkit that actually does map to native widgets. Unfortunately they did it in the most ass way possible, leaving developers to worry about things like the message loop and "the UI thread". In any case, this is the part of Eclipse that has to be translated to the native OS.
What am I missing here? (Score:3, Insightful)
So where the heck is the news here? You might as well post an article about how Linux is a great platform for C development.
This is article is almost a big "duh".
Now what *would* merit an article is if MyEclipse and the Apple Java team buried the hatchet and fixed MyEclipse so that it worked flawlessly and with every feature it has for Windows and Linux. Right now, Apple says it is MyEclipse at fault and MyEclipse says it is Apple at fault. I was in two separate Java sessions at the WWDC where people basically asked Apple flat out to just get it working, no matter whose fault it is. If MyEclipse worked completely on the Mac JVM, *that* would be news for nerds, stuff that matters.