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Programming IT Technology

Eclipse 2.0 Released 171

Posted by michael from the tools-of-the-trade dept.
Smelroy writes "The Eclipse IDE version 2.0 was just released. There were several earlier articles on Slashdot found here and here."
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Eclipse 2.0 Released More

Eclipse 2.0 Released

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  • Consider this feature list:
    • Coded throughput on the backend buffer list
    • Memory-enabled instruction parameters
    • Rationalized ERQ management
    • Bus-mastered bit copying with fully XOR-compatible flip-flopping
    • JIT file saving

    This is great news for Linux!

  • File handle leak (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've been using the latest Motif builds for some time, which have claimed to be Eclipse 2.0. (the GtK version is not happy on Debian). Its an excellent product. I really like it, but the builds I've been using have suffered a nasty file handle leak.

    I've written a little java monitor that sits on top of my Gnome menu bar and polls /proc/sys/fs/file-nr. Its a case of quit Eclipse whenever it gets close to the top, say once every half hour with 10,000 file handles available depending on what I'm doing.
    • Have you reported this bug to Eclipse's bugzilla or have you been keeping this one to yourself?

    • Re:File handle leak (Score:3, Insightful)

      by EJB ( 9167 )
      I'm running Debian (unstable) and have no major problems running Eclipse 2.0 - GTK.

      You should see the CVS (Team) integration, by the way, that alone makes it a great IDE.

      I've had it open for a week without running into the file handle problem, maybe you used an interim version (integration or nightly build) that has this quirk? You might want to try a newer build in that case.

      • Re:File handle leak (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You have eclipse running under unstable? I'm running unstable, blackdown j2sdk 1.3.1, and am getting the following error message (lameness filters beware!)

        On the console:

        ** ([unknown]:8664): WARNING **: Couldn't load font "Sans 10" falling back to "Sans 10"

        ** ([unknown]:8664): WARNING **: Couldn't load font "Sans 10" falling back to "Sans 10"

        ** ([unknown]:8664): WARNING **: All font failbacks failed!!!!

        The error message gives the startup command line and says the "JVM exits with error code=1"

        I know its a font problem (*duh*) but which font package am I missing.

        Posting anonymously because I don't have my password handy.

        • Sorry, can't help you there. I usually run jdk1.4 from Sun, but just tried Blackdown 1.3.1 and it works as well.

          I can't figure out how it resolves font names. I don't have a font called 'Sans'. I have lucidasans and a lot of other sans-serif fonts. I don't know too much about X font mechanisms, and I'm not sure if SWT/GTK has its own font-name alias files, uses X fonts directly, or perhaps even uses Java2D to load TrueType fonts.

          If you know how to do that, I'd suggest creating a font-name alias for 'Sans' to some font.

          Some more detail: you can change the font from the preferences menu in Eclipse, but you need to start it first. (duh too) It shows a list with mostly X font names, as well as "sans" and "serif". Those two fonts don't show up with xlsfonts or xfontsel on my machine.
          The "system default" is "Sans", and it doesn't seem to use the GTK theme font in any way.

  • EMACS? (Score:3, Funny)

    by bsDaemon ( 87307 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @11:34AM (#3791899)
    "Eclipse is a kind of universal tool platform - an open extensible IDE for anything and nothing in particular."

    • Re:EMACS? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by __past__ ( 542467 )
      Those who don't understand Emacs are doomed to reinvent it, badly.

      I really wonder what is so great about the fact that Eclipse now makes it possible to rewrite all existing Emacs modules in Java, instead of simply using them. Then again, Eclipse seems to be just an IDE, so this critique should rather go to Gnome and KDE, which are more similar in scope with Emacs, just with a little less stability, functionality and comfort.

      • You may have had a similar experience to mine: download eclipse (looong download), run it, try to get to the file menu... file menu? Hello?

        Alt-F does not work.

        Don't uninstall Eclipse at this point, as I almost did, and let me save you some time of searching in the bug database to find bug 11912 [eclipse.org].

        All you have to do is turn off numlock, and the keyboard shortcuts will work again!

        I find it amazing that version 2 of a programming tool still has keyboard problems like this one. Am I the only one with numlock always on (you know, I only need one set of arrows on my keyboard, not two) - and who uses keyboard shortcuts when I am coding?

        • I only need one set of arrows on my keyboard, not two

          But you need two sets of numbers?

          • the number pad that NumLock controls has the same layout as a calculator, which is the layout that many of us learned to touch-type numbers with. With large numbers, I'm probably twenty times faster with the number pad than I am with the numbers above the letter keys, and I type large numbers more often than I use arrow keys (and furthermore, the T-shaped arrow key configuration is much more convenient than the number pad arrow keys anyhow).

      • Actually, it implements more than emacs does (in terms on Java tooling), and far more elegantly. For Java development, it really beats the pants off of most of the other tools out there. Emacs may be powerful, but it needs a usability overhaul.
        • Emacs may be powerful, but it needs a usability overhaul.
          The "problem" with Emacs is that it is meant to be easy to use, not easy to learn. It just doesn't follow the idea of most "usability experts" that the users one should care about most are utter morons that are not able to read or write.

          But I admit that a point-and-click GUI designer will probably not be part of Emacs' JDE in the near future ;-)

  • I still don't see Visual Studio for Linux (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I still don't see anything on the Linux development horizon that holds a candle to Visual Studio. I still get more good code written faster in VS than in any Linux IDE.

    How does one live without Intellisense when writing code? Even Forte only shows class members - when it comes time to define parameters, that's where the good times end. No datatypes - no names - no nothing.

    • I get more good code written in vi than anywhere else. I'm sure lots of programmers are more comfortable in Visual Studio, but then again lots of programmers are only comfortable using Visual Basic too. Personally, I've never liked IDE's at all.

      • It might be time to try again? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by vanguard ( 102038 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @01:14PM (#3792220)
        I was just like you. I spent almost a decade using vi (sometimes emacs) as my IDE. I became so fast in vi that nothing else seemed worth my time.

        Then I starting working with other sr. developers who swore by their IDEs. Things that I would suggest are a lot of work were easy for them. (Like moving a class from one package to another.) It's easy because their IDE either did it all for them or it pointed out the problems in an easy way.

        Of course the debuggers are incredible. Being able to walk through code and see what happens to my variables is great. System.out.println is a joke is comparision.

        Now I can wrap things in try/catch/finally in .25 seconds, I can build a getter and a setter for a private var in the same amount of time.

        My "beef" against IDEs was that they robbed me of a chance to learn. I felt like they wrote the code for me. That's no longer true. I good IDE will match your braces, wrap code in try/catch, create shortcuts for phrases, (do all the "physical labor") but it won't take away the real coding.

        I like IDEA [intellij.com] but there are a lot of IDEs that beat vi (according to me).
        • I wish I could edit my post. Here are some vi style fixes.

          %s/a joke is comparision/a joke in comparison/

          %s/I good IDE/A good IDE/
        • "Of course the debuggers are incredible. Being able to walk through code and see what happens to my variables is great. System.out.println is a joke is comparision."
          Two points:
          1. sometimes (often) System.(out|err).println is exactly what you need and if you only need one or two, printlns are faster to use than a debugger
          2. when you do need a debugger, jswat [bluemarsh.com] is your friend.

          "Now I can wrap things in try/catch/finally in .25 seconds, I can build a getter and a setter for a private var in the same amount of time."
          I have a macros in vim for the often done edits such as javadoc comments, comment in/out of selected lines, try-catch block, etc. As for finding getter and setter, I've not bothered to create macros because I've never had much problem finding them in a second or two with a simple search, assuming I can't already remember the name because I named it well.
          " My "beef" against IDEs was that they robbed me of a chance to learn. I felt like they wrote the code for me. That's no longer true. I good IDE will match your braces, wrap code in try/catch, create shortcuts for phrases, (do all the "physical labor") but it won't take away the real coding."
          My beefs with IDEs are that they get in my way, make me learn a whole new interface just to get the same level of functionality (or less), are harder to script, less flexible, often tied to or limited to specific versions of a given language SDK, and are often slow and buggy (assuming they are even available for a particular platform

          Every single thing that you mentioned (brace matching, code macros, abbreviations) are either build into vim or easy ( That said, every other developer on my team uses IDEs most or all of the time. If it works for them, I say more power to 'em. They even used to give me shit for using vim and shells, but they got tired of my already having a way to do every single thing they point out as an "advantage" of their IDE.

          The only thing I'd like to see (and may work on one of these days, since vim and ctags are open source) is a better ctags implementation. What I have works well (decent auto complete and very nice tag jumping), but isn't as refined as the systems I see in current IDEs. That is a legitimate plus to JBuilder, IDEA and their ilk. For now.

          • >

            sometimes, definitly not often.
            If you say often I would say you program a lot of ..... and are in need to practice avoiding that ... at the first hand.

            How can:
            stop program
            open editor
            inserting prints
            compiling
            linking
            restart program
            open output and find the right printout be faster than:
            start debugger
            view your variables

            Hu? Probaly I should be fair: restart program with debugger, set breakpoint or adjust outobreak options(break on segv, e.g.), wait for hitting a (auto) breakpoint and start tracing.

            Nothing is faster, I have corrected my error before you have restarted your application.

            Not to count the fact that you likely have tor emove your prints again.

            angel'o'sphere
          • I have a macros in vim for the often done edits such as javadoc comments, comment in/out of selected lines, try-catch block, etc. As for finding getter and setter, I've not bothered to create macros because I've never had much problem finding them in a second or two with a simple search, assuming I can't already remember the name because I named it well.

            Like your co-workers, I'll probably give up trying to convince you soon but I thought I'd shot it for now. :)

            Do the automatic try/catch blocks you've scripted catch the right exception? If my code throws a SQLException then it catches only that. If it can throw multiple exceptions, it will just catch Exception.

            As for finding getters and setters, I have a preference for the nice looking method list on the left. However, that's not what I was talking about. My IDE *builds* the getter/setter for me. Just the other day I had a class that didn't do much more than store a bunch of values. After I defined it's 72 fields I needed 72 getters and 72 setters. Defining the fields took about an hour (it required a little thought) and building the getters/setters took less than a second.

            Another thing I didn't metion was auto-imports. If I use a hashtable (or whatever) for the first time in that class it asks me if I want to include it in my imports at the top. It also organizes my imports nicely.
            Auto-code generation is nice.
            • The Emacs JDEE does most of this (I'm not sure about about importing--you can ask it to import the class that the cursor (point) is currently over, and you can sort the import list at any time. It also generates getters and setters. I've never look for an automatic try/catch wrapping function. It may or may not have it. It would be a good thing to add to it!

              I guess this is sort of a moot point. If I'm try to show that IDE's don't have too many advantages, I'm not really succeeding--it would be pretty safe to call Emacs and IDE IMHO.
        • Hmm.. I think everybody should just use what he or she feels comfortable using. I love VIM, but should I try to convert others to dump their favorite IDE for VIM? No way. It'll ruin their productivity. And the same holds the other way around.

          To me though, typing in the actual code takes far less time than thinking up the design.

    • I still don't see anything on the Linux development horizon that holds a candle to Visual Studio. I still get more good code written faster in VS than in any Linux IDE.

      Have you tried KDevelop [kdevelop.org]? I'm used to Visual Studio, and found the transition to KDevelop smooth. I especially like that it makes heavy use of automake and autoconf, that it supports CVS, and isn't designed specifically to make KDE applications. The user interface is very similar to that of Visual Studio.

      There is also KDE Studio [thekompany.com], which looks similar. I haven't tried this though.

    • Eclipse gives you all that good intellisense stuff--classes, methods, parameters, auto import, etc. Even the as-you-type underlining for syntax problems.

      Don't get me wrong, MS did a great job with Visual Studio, especially the .NET version. Eclipse isn't there, yet, and may never catch up as VS.NET keeps evolving. But Eclipse is very nice. And there's even a C# environment in the works (as well as a C++ environment).
      • Eclipse (and IDEA and other Java tools) give you refactorings. You can say "rename this clas to Blah" and all references to the class will automatically be updated too. Ditto for fields and methods. Ditto for moving stuff between classes. Can VS.NET do any of that? VS6 couldn't.

        These refactorings alone make it worth using Eclipse or one of the equivalent Java IDEs. Once you have them, you wont want to go back.
    • They don't write code for environments what has APIs as messed up as Windows. For a good example, look at CreateProcess [microsoft.com] Vs. fork() [opengroup.org]

      Granted you may have to string together multiple different calls (i.e. fork + exec + setuid) under Unix to get the job done but at least every possible permutation for every possible situation isn't in your face as required parameters everytime you try to spawn a child process.

      That aside -- I don't like writing Win32 code without Intellisense. Visual Studio.NET is darn cool. BTW, my favorite IDE under Unix is EMACS. Until VS.NET my favorite IDE under Windows was EMACS.
    • Ummmm....have you tried Kylix/Delphi?? The world would be a much happier place if everybody coded in Object Pascal. =)
    • Real programmers use, a text editor and a terminal. I prefer emacs and a gnome-terminal.
      • Well, I should say my past experiences with IDEs have been bad. Visual C++6, uck, the thing never compiles anything. Kdevelop, it took forever to get the darn thing to work, and when it does work, the qt stuff was messed up. That was an old version of kdevelop though. I think I'll give eclipse a try, I'll download it over night, tonight.

  • Finally GTK Support (Score:4, Interesting)

    by peterdaly ( 123554 ) <petedaly.ix@netcom@com> on Saturday June 29, 2002 @11:42AM (#3791912)
    It looks like they have an official GTK (not motif) version available for Linux. If you previously had a horrible experience with Eclipse on Linux, I know I did, it may be worth trying again.

    I use IDEA, it will be interesting to see how it compares. The Eclipse UI alone, last time I tried it, made me hate it.

    -Pete
    • I've been using the GTK version of Eclipse (integration builds) for the last two months without major problems.

      It (gtk version) used to suck half a year ago, but it is fast and quite stable now. One big bonus: it understands the scroll-wheel on your mouse now.

      Strange thing: Eclipse has no syntax-colored XML editor. However it has a specialized editor for Eclipse plugin descriptors (plugin.xml files) with a nice syntax-colored xml editor tab. And if you create a plugin using the plugin-creation wizard, you can select an "XML file editor". The generated plugin is a nice syntax-colored XML editor, no programming is required.
      That's a complex way to activate a useful feature.

      • Re:Finally GTK Support (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Strange thing: Eclipse has no syntax-colored XML editor.

        Sure not out of the box, but there is one.

        Head on down to sourceforge and pick up Solar Eclipse [sourceforge.net] jsp and xml syntax highlighting goodness.

        I really should set up an account and karma whore more often.

  • Screenshots? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Wolfier ( 94144 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @11:46AM (#3791923)
    Do they regard screenshots as shallow first impression or something, why isn't there a screenshot link in their home page?

    It is without any doubt *THE* most important information a first-timer can get about any program with a GUI.

    Friggin "no-screenshot" religion.

    • Re:Screenshots? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Hop-Frog ( 28712 )
      IBM's version on Linux (this is based on Eclipse 1.0):

      http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/libr ar y/os-plat/

      Rational's version on Windows (probably Eclipse 1.0, too):

      http://www.rational.com/products/xde/javaed/inde x. jsp

      A free tool, Spindle, that works in Eclipse 2.0:

      http://spindle.sourceforge.net/

    • Here are screenshots (Score:5, Informative)

      by boa13 ( 548222 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @12:52PM (#3792144) Homepage Journal
      I too was quite surprised about the missing screenshots. So, I made some screenshots of Eclipse/Motif. Copy them as long as you want, I hereby give away any copyright I could have had on them. Besides, they won't stay forver on my web space, as soon as I need the space, they're gone.

      Well, that's it! Enjoy! There's also an interesting wiki about Eclipse [swiki.net].

    • Re:Screenshots? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Tim Colgate ( 519024 )
      There are some good screenshots here [eclipse.org]

      Ironically, they illustrate a C++ program.

  • Installation, bugs, first impressions (Score:5, Insightful)

    by boa13 ( 548222 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @11:55AM (#3791944) Homepage Journal
    So, I downloaded Eclipse's 54 MB zip file. 54 MB! These things never stop to grow!

    There were no installation instructions. Not that there's anything difficult, unzip in your directory of choice, do some file permission cleanup, you're done. Oh, and be sure to have a Java environment up and running - hey, it's a Java application, of course you better have one! :)

    So, I start Eclipse, and it crashes politely, telling me to look in the log, and where the log is. Nice. A big Java stacktrace, how typical. A Xerces error. After some fumbling around, I understand my problem: I already had Xerces installed, and I had put links to the Xerces jars in my $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/ext directory. So, those jars had precedence over the ones shipped with Eclipse, a custom IBM Xerces version. Well, ok, let's remove the links.

    I restart Eclipse, and it crashes less politely, with a startup screen sticking around until I kill it, and an unsatisfied link error. A symbol missing from a library, now this is quite worse. After spending some time on eclipse.org, I find the solution. Eclipse is compiled against Motif, and ships with a Motif library. But ld doesn't know about that, and tries to link against the system libXm, which is provided by LessTif. Quite badly compatible with Motif, indeed. Solution? Create a startup script along these lines:

    #!/bin/bash
    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/java/eclipse
    /usr/local/java/eclipse/eclipse $*
    So, I restart Eclipse, and it works. Finally. A README would have helped. Very nice, clean, welcoming, and documented. Quite fast, too, faster than Netbeans, anyway. I have not spent much time using Eclipse, I have just built a simple "Hello world!" in Java. It's a very pleasing environment. All the usual tedious tasks, such as setting a proper classpath and environment are done through nice and powerful dialogs. It is a very professional environment; you can in a few clicks be ready to debug your project against several Java runtimes, there's a builtin support for Junit and for CVS. The editor is fast enough, even though I keep preferring Vim, and offers powerful completions, code refactoring, etc. All the problems and errors are logged in a very cool ToDo list, where you can also add your own entries. I like that. :)

    Eclipse is written 100% in Java, so how does it come it is noticeably faster than Netbeans? The secret is in th GUI. Eclipse doesn't use Swing or AWT, but another toolkit called SWT. Think of it as an AWT version 2. It offers Java programmers a direct mapping of the system widgets. So, the platform-independancy of Swing is lost, but the gains are tremendous: you get to keep the look and feel of the platform you're running on, and you're much more responsive to user events. The version of Eclipse I downloaded uses Motif. And it uses it very well: it's one of the most clean Motif application I've ever seen. The main problem is that the file browsing dialogs are still the same ultra-loosy ones, which don't hide hidden files, etc. There's another Eclipse version available that uses GTK 2. And of course, there's a Windows version. And soon, a MacOS (X ?) version.

    So, what's left to Netbeans? Well, Eclipse doesn't have a GUI editor, and it was one of the few reasons, along with its debugger, that made me use Netbeans. But now that I've seen the text editor and work environment of Eclipse, I might well drop Vim when it comes to Java development, and use Eclipse instead. Clearly, Eclipse enjoys much more support from IBM (and friends) than Netbeans does. The QA is much better it seems, when you look at the final product.

    Yep, Sun... you've been Eclipsed!

    • Eclipse, Vim, and Netbeans (Score:4, Informative)

      by revscat ( 35618 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @12:18PM (#3792004) Journal

      First off, nice post. It helps that I agree with just about everything you said. When you compare Eclipse with Netbeans, Eclipse is much faster, no matter how you measure that: load time, compile time, reponsiveness of the GUI, etc. Plus, it doesn't have every single possible bell and whistle available pre-installed. I hate the fact that Netbeans loads every single Java thingamajig that has ever been invented. So Netbeans is out.

      I still enjoy Vim, but I have Eclipse configured so that I edit Java files with the Eclipse editor, but XML and .properties files are still opened with Vim. It also helps that ^S not only saves, but compiles the current file. Another strong point of Eclipse is the robust history mechanism is has, sort of a built-in single-user CVS. Want to be able to compare your current code with what you saved last Thursday? No problemo.

      All in all, nice IDE. I never liked Netbeans and most of the other free Java editors (such as JEdit) are just enhanced text editors with no real benefits over Vim.

    • On Windows (NT 4.0 SP6), I didn't get any errors except when I tried to build some big projects (Out of memory error), adding "-vmargs -Xmx256M" to the startup command fixed that.

      54MB is huge, but the convenience that the editor brings make it worth the download.

      Best thing I like so far is the organize imports feature (it automatically finds classes you have used in the library and and writes import statements for you automatically), no more api lookup and then copy/paste the package names, and it writes the import statements with each class that's used listed line by line so you know exactly what classes you're using in your code.

      Only thing I don't like now is the lack of external directory classpath support. Java allows classpath that ends with a directory but Eclipse forces you to jar up your libraries, which is not a major problem in itself but just inconvenient.

      Speed is definitely acceptable (on Windows at least). Of course it's no vi's or notepad's speed but then again which IDE is?
    • I do have to agree with boa13, Eclipse lacks some features that are nice when developing java as a side project or for school. If you were to have to design some large complex GUI interface, doing it in Eclipse would suck big time. But first I'll do some history.

      As many of you know, Eclipse is written and developed by IBM, all open source (YAY!!). IBMs last product was the hideous VisualAge for Java. This IDE was an abomination to the world of programming. I was forced to use it at school, and I will never forgive my instructor for that. You were stuck in one view, which was nothing like a file view (they ducplicated the view in Eclipse, but it works a lot better now). Getting VisualAge to show you an entire file was a pain in the butt, and if you were able to get to that point, if you messed up any syntax in that file (such as messing up a class declaration or having one to many closing brackets) VisualAge would not let you save the file nor tell you what was wrong. Next with it, all the Java files were hidden in one large database file that VisualAge maintained, exported also sucked.

      Ok, so IBM decided drop Visual which was a $800 program or so for professional. Eclipse offers a wide range of features and settings. From here out, I'll be comparing Eclipse to VisualCafe (which I have used most to VisualAge). Eclipse has a decent line formatter that I have been very happy with. It is nothing robust like JIndent, but that is something I hope they would improve upon. Most of the auto formating features are comperable to all other IDEs I have ever used. As far as hotkeys with eclipse, some of them are not as intuitive as others. There is a common hotkey (ctrl-tab), which most IDEs will switch between open files, and eclipse does not follow this; they use ctrl-F6 (dunno). But after you get past that, most of the hotkeys are pretty good.

      Speed: This is one thing I have to say I enjoy over VisualCafe. There is the use of SWT vs AWT, which does help a lot. But as far as how it handles the class/method browsers, it works quite a faster. It seems to pick up errors quickly and compiles just like anything else out there.

      Eclipse has some other fun built in features such as CVS browser (I think), pluggins, and lots of different views to choose from, all of which are quite customizable. For the Java Virtual Machine, you can choose between 1.3.1 and 1.4, which can cause problems if you have to change code that was originally written in 1.2 or 1.1.7 even. When compiling code, it is smart and will only compile changed files, or code in other files that has been affected.

      My use of Eclipse: I work in a dept of about 50 Java developers, which I am now trying to move to Eclipse. Here we do all of our visual development by hand, as to be able to get the exact behaviors we want. I work with projects that have 1500+ files in them, and a few files that are 7000+ lines. Eclipse handles the files well for browsing, but when it comes to a 7000+ line file, it can tend to lag a little (on my P2-233Mhz machine). At any one time Eclipse is running, it seems to use around 60-70 megs of memory, 20 more then VisualCafe, but should not be a big deal for most developers out there.

      Eclipse seems to be a very good IDE, and I have been happy with how it has performed. I have been using snapshots for a few months now, and it has become more stable, and I have yet to have it crash on me since its release (in that whole day Friday). Eclipse is a well suited IDE for large project development, as well as small, but seems to be designed to help with large projects.

      I am looking forward to more fixes features that IBM and partners will release with Eclipse (such as being able to print SELECTED text).

      • Getting VisualAge to show you an entire file was a pain in the butt, and if you were able to get to that point, if you messed up any syntax in that file (such as messing up a class declaration or having one to many closing brackets) VisualAge would not let you save the file nor tell you what was wrong.
        If your teacher did not tell lyou how to use VA properly, This IDE was an abomination to the world of programming. I was forced to use it at school, and I will never forgive my instructor for that.

        Well, you could have opened the error output?
        I used VA 3.0 a bit. Its a superior IDE, the best I've ever seen besides Eclipse.
        The only problem is that it forces you to work in a specific way. If just happen to dislike that you are doomed. Otherwise your productivity doubles in a few weeks.
        Everythign is compiled on the fly, errors are impossible. A typical cmpile step does not exist. Just click run, you only can click it if your open file is compileable of course.

        BTW: VA is not droped like you say. Ok, so IBM decided drop Visual which was a $800 program or so for professional

        And you allways could get a free version of it somewhere somehow in a promotion.

        angel'o'sphere
    • Just a few things you said aren't exactly true, however, I made the same mistakes myself a few months ago.

      The 54 megabyte version is the SDK comes with all the stuff to write your own eclipse plugin. The 20MB version labeled "Executable Binary" is sufficient for anyone who wants to use eclipse. After I found this and banged my head into the wall for not reading the page, I was happier with Eclipse.

      The speed is less in SWT as you would think. Swing really isn't that slow. SWT is faster than swing, but not by the leaps and bounds that Eclipse is faster than NetBeans or jEdit. The deal is Eclipse doesn't come with 30 plugins. NetBeans has more plugins (and loads everyone at startup) than any project on Earth will ever use. From FTP support to J2EE server integration. It's a tremendous pain. jEdit lets you configure the plugins that you want. I love jEdit's XML editing (about par with Emacs). Someone should write in XML editing support for Eclipse. Thats my biggest beef with Eclipse.

      I thought SWT was cool and I was going to do my current project in SWT. My mind was changed by the potential of Swing. LNF (look and feel) configuration is awesome! I wrote a little class to allow the look and feel to be configured by system properties (which I always load from a configuration file). So, by changing a few entries in a (uncannily similar to samba .. property = value) configuration file, you can make the program look and feel different. In the end, there will be a configuration program to allow the user to test all the LNF's. I envision that this small amount of effort on my part will let the user choose an interface that is a little more comfortable for them. In the very least, they will have a more asthetically pleasing resource, and that means a lot to end users. (Think about the time you spend customizing and picking themes for your Linux desktop!)

      Anyhow, in the end, I heard that the benchmarks showed that there really wasn't as big of a difference in speed as there was made out to be.

      Want to simulate SWT in Swing?
      Type this in main()
      UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAn dFeelClassName());
      but it will look like motif and not gtk under linux.

      Good links!!!
      javootoo.com [javootoo.com] links to just about every LNF.
      a screenshot on javootoo of SkinLF with aquathemepack [l2fprod.com] my favorite!
      audiolaf [utoronto.ca] may allow blind users to use your current app without a rewrite!
      Some conversation [sun.com] search for SWT to see I'm not the only crackpot that thinks SWT isn't that much faster (anymore).

      Keep in mind that it really doesn't matter if the controls are drawn by Java or the OS, they still have to be drawn and Java2 1.4 isn't stupid such that it doesn't user the available hardware acceleration routines available from the OS. Theoretically, it doesn't matter who draws them if they are both drawn the same way :).
      • Someone has written an XML editor plugin for Eclipse. It's on sourceforge and other posts in this topic have a link to it.

        Also, using the real native widgets has some advantages. For example, Eclipse will use your Windows XP theme if you're using one.
    • I agree with you on most points. I've used Eclipse 1, and its interface is indeed fast. However, Borland JBuilder is just as fast, IMO, and it uses a customized JRE with Swing. The reason Netbeans is so slow is because of its architecture, I believe. It's extremely flexible. I guess some people don't like the fact that it ships with a large amount of features. I don't use most of them, so I go into the Options dialog and disable the ones I don't want. Netbeans is also a smaller download. I'll say something for the people who want a GUI editor. Don't get your hopes up. It is in Borland's best interest that Eclipse never gets a GUI editor. See Eclipse's FAQ.

  • Java UI doesn't have to be slow (Score:5, Interesting)

    by peterdaly ( 123554 ) <petedaly.ix@netcom@com> on Saturday June 29, 2002 @12:05PM (#3791968)
    I know this is an eclipse thread, so this is slightly offtopic. Being a Java IDE topic, here are my responses to some posts I have seen.

    Eclipse is faster than Netbeans because it doesn't use swing.

    Hogwash. If you believe jave UI's (including swing) are slow, try giving IDEA [intellij.com] a shot. Even if you don't like the IDE itself (many people swear by it), I consider the UI very fast, and much faster than Eclipse 1.0 on Linux, although I heard Eclipse was much faster on Win32.

    A 21 day demo of IDEA is available for download. Try it in addition to Eclipse if you are in the market for a new Java IDE.

    I don't work for them or anything, but am very satisfied user of their product, and am much more productive for server side things than on Netbeans. It doens't do everything, but it does what it does very well.

    -Pete

    • Try Java 1.4 (Score:4, Informative)

      by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @12:24PM (#3792025) Homepage Journal
      Swing in Java 1.4 has improved by a huge amount. I suspect that they have handed off more of the real work to the AWT level, but how ever they have done it, it is a great improvement.

    • Re:Java UI doesn't have to be slow (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Swing is only fast if you have a fast computer. I for one am of the opinion that you shouldn't need a GHz processor with boatloads of memory to run a GUI application. Menus in Swing take forever to pop up, scrolling uses obscene amounts of CPU, and Swing programs themselves use obscene amounts of memory.

      Try this as an experiment: In any Swing application with a resonably large amount of stuff in the menus, click the mouse on the first of the menus and move it back and forth across the rest of the menubar. Now try the same thing in a C++ or SWT application. Notice the difference?
    • I use to be a proponent of IDEA, but a combination of it's huge memory usage, lack of speed, and cost has outweighed its great features -- i.e. excellent refactoring support.

      If anything is a sure sign that there's a problem with speed/memory is the fact that IDEA has a status area showing the current memory usage. A click on it will force a garbage collection. THAT shows you what is wrong with most Java designs built around Swing.

      This is not to say all programs designed with Swing suck, but you do need a strong knowledge of the architecture and design built around it to do it well.

  • How about Perl support? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by standards ( 461431 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @12:06PM (#3791970)
    But when will it support that most popular of languages, Perl? I hear talk, but I don't see action! Is there a serious effort for Perl? That'd rock, and I'd join 'em immediately!
    • wtf do you need an IDE for Perl?
    • If you want it so badly, just do it. It's open source and prepared for your plugins.

    • But when will it support that most popular of languages, Perl? I hear talk, but I don't see action! Is there a serious effort for Perl? That'd rock, and I'd join 'em immediately!

      LOL, so they made it open source and now they are forced to support YOUR wish?

      Why don't you start the development your own?

      Ah, I asume because Eclipse is in Java and you are to old to learn it. Or well, I forgot, Java sucks, is crapy and slow and ... there was something further most posters on /. nit pick about.

      Yeah, it has a gc ...

      angel'o'sphere

    • But when will it support that most popular of languages, Perl? I hear talk, but I don't see action! Is there a serious effort for Perl? That'd rock, and I'd join 'em immediately!

      ActiveState has a Perl IDE, called Komodo. It's NOT open source, but it has saved me a ton of time. They have a 21-day evaluation version, and if you want a home license it's $29.50 (under 30 bucks, the price point all software should strive for).

      Check it out: Komodo [activestate.com] . They have both Linux and Windows versions, and the IDE is based on Mozilla (and other open source technologies). It's kind of a shame they make it closed-source, but it's well worth the money. It also supports many other languages (Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, Tcl, XML, XSLT and more -- 24 languages total).

    • Hey! Why can't anyone read and interpret my comment as written???!!!

      I said if someone was developing a perl plug-in, I'd join them! I didn't say "hey, what the hell, why won't someone do something for me for free".

      What I said (quite clearly) was:
      1. Is there a serious perl effort?
      2. If so, that's cool, AND
      3. If so, I'm willing to help!

      Geez, just because I don't think I have enough experience to begin the project doesn't mean that I am unwilling to participate and give what I can to the cause. And I don't want to start another parallel effort if others are already working on it.

      But given the "just do it yourself and shut up" comments imply that no one in the Perl community cares, and so therefore either this is a new thought, or that I'm insane because no one else cares.

      In any case, the "do it yourself or shut up" crowd is a little to anal for my tastes. If you can't provide value to the discussion, then don't bother replying - you'll just end up looking like an a$$hole.
  • It's unusable until then.

  • I love Eclipse (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lt ( 31829 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @12:36PM (#3792091) Homepage
    Best Java IDE I have ever used. goes way beyond code completion for method names. Type for then ctrl-space You get three choices, iterate over an aray, iterate over an array with temporary varialble iteraate over a collection. Choice one an it gueses the array/colleciton to use from available variables and puts the type cast in the loop eg

    Collection list = null;

    for (Iterator iter = list.iterator(); iter.hasNext();) {
    type element = (type) iter.next();

    }
    Refactoring for
    • pulling up a method
    • extracting a method from a codeblock
    • replacing all occurance of a string with a variable
    • surround with try/catch
    and more
  • Running RedHat 7.2. Downloaded the gtk version, but apparently I need gtk 2.0 and I only have 1.2. Didn't see anything in the requirements, but whatever. Try the motif version. Works fine, but I wish it hadn't. It's ugly as hell. Create a new project and Hello World. Everything worked fine, but I don't see much difference between this and eclipse 1.0.
    • Downloaded the gtk version, but apparently I need gtk 2.0 and I only have 1.2. Didn't see anything in the requirements, but whatever.


      The GTK version is called the "GTK 2" version. What more do you want?
    • So the platform name "Linux RH 7.1/SuSE 7.1 (x86/GTK 2)" was too ambiguous ? I guess that explains why it was so incredibly hard to find the 2.0 documentation and project plan on the site.
      </rant>
    • Yeah, I have RH7.2 on my machine. Got the GTK2 version of Eclipse... tried to run eclipse thru X and just got an eclipse splash screen which just sat there. Hadda kill it.

      Tried running the jar directly - no dice either.

      Finally, I dropped to the command line and found I was missing the libgtk-X11-2.0.so.o. A locate couldn't find hide nor hair of it. Got on google and tried to find it - found out it's in GTK2-1.3 or some such RPM. rpmfind and just about every other source for this RPM leads to nowhere.

      Ok. Shall I try the motif version now as ABGT did? Or can someone refer me to a site that has a copy of this gtk2-1.3*.rpm?

      What I want to know is... why the heck have they got to use GTK for anyway? Just write the whole dang thing in Java and be done with it.

  • Praise for Eclipse (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SatanLilHlpr ( 17629 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @02:46PM (#3792610)
    I am reading at +3, and I am seeing a rather mixed reaction to eclipse, which surprises me. Perhaps this is because I run Win2k. I have had nothing but pleasant surprises working with code freeze releases of Eclipse over the last 6 weeks. The installer on Win2k was my first surprise, the executable *is* the installer, just unzip and run, the exe configures itself, found my JRE. I was up an running in no time.

    The 'workspace' concept takes a little getting used to, but everything they do is just so slick and well thought out. The debugger is pretty sweet, especially in comparison to something like JBuilder.

    The perspective system is really cool; you can choose from many pre-defined perspectives, or define your own. A perspective is a collection of on screen views of your project, a view being an editor, a class broswer, a debug window, and output window, and so forth. I defined an 'edit' perspective, which has a giant edit window, a small class browser window, and a quick display/hide button for the filesystem navigator view. I switch between that and the debug perspective often. Very convenient.

    SWT makes this Java app a pleasure. Yes, good swing apps are possible, but *damn* they've done a good job with this thing.

    In summation, I urge anyone looking at Java IDE's to give Eclispe a look-see.

  • No support for web applications? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by slonlow ( 569901 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @04:03PM (#3792898) Homepage
    Just wondering if Eclipse 2.0 has any support for Java web apps. I've downloaded it and it looks to me like there are noticeable omissions in the wizards. I tried to import an existing web app, complete with WEB-INF, WEB-INF classes etc and am not getting much help from the eclipse environment. And I can't find JSP/HTML/XML highlighting. Am I missing something? I vaguely remember reading something about eclipse 1.x not having the features of some IBM IDE. I was hoping that this would be added in Eclipse 2.0. Are there any plugins?
    • I was just giving Eclipse a chance the other day. I spent about an hour trying to get the same things working that you did. (Actually, it was me and another guy trying to import an existing app).

      In the end, we went with IntelliJ's IDEA.

      • Re:No support for web applications? (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Precisely!


        IDE developers out there, my first and only often criteria for judging any IDE out there is - can I import an existing project easily?


        If not, it's not worth it - you're going to have to give me something really spectacular if I'm going to go through the pain of you making this difficult for me. Working with my current project lets me compare your environment to my current one meaningfully.


        I didn't like Eclipse 1.0 and hate Websphere Application Studio (I had to endure over an hour uninstalling it the other day) - there seem to be too many "evil wizards" [pragmaticprogrammer.com] and I don't like the metaphors used by IBM - they don't seem intuitive. Eclipse 2.0 will definitely get a look, but I don't imagine I'll stop using IDEA anytime soon.


    • Yep, same here. I was bewildered with 1.0 because it seemed like a huge oversite. Then I realized that IBM is selling their WebSphere Studio [ibm.com] IDE which is basically Eclipse + plugins for JSP/XML/etc. and it all made sense.

      Thought that 2.0 would be different, but I guess not.

      -Russ
  • It doesn't look like it's easy to change key bindings, but I just want to change one, and I'm willing to recompile for it. Anyone have a link?

    I'm very happy to see built-in code reformatting, and that you can bind things to the tab key without a modifier. Now I just need to put them together.

    • Re:Key bindings (Score:2, Informative)

      by MagPulse ( 316 )
      I found the two XML files you need to change, at least for JDT and the global key bindings. Globals are in plugins\org.eclipse.ui_2.0.0\plugin.xml and the JDT (Java editor) bindings are in plugins\org.eclipse.jdt.ui_2.0.0\plugin.xml.
  • I'm sorry, but when you refer to some "IDE 2.0 Has Been Released" that sounds a lot more like it's a new standards version for the IDE disk drives than like an Integrated Development Environment. Here's the FAQ [eclipse.org] but you should still say what general category of thing you're talking about....
  • Big Brither is back. Eclipse wants to control your source code for you. There is no way to even "open" a file. INstead, you have to "import" it into your project. As best as I can tell, "importing" a file drops it in some sort of single-monolithic-file repesenting your source code for a project. In it, they do things like versioning.

    It sounds like a nice idea to use in some case, but it should not be a requirement! What if I just downloaded some source code and want to view it in the same color-syntax-highlightng IDE I program in?

    Now, this was the experience my co-workers and had when we looked at 2.0 beta -- and this thread is about 2.0 final. Maybe they fixed it?
    • I agree, it is pretty lame-o that you can't just do File->Open. But it's not as bad as you make it out to be.

      Eclipse's "workspace" (the land where projects and source code and whatever else you're using Eclipse to mess with) is just a directory called "workspace". Just put anything in there you want and then right click on your project and select "Refresh". Whammo, it's there.

      It is a little arrogant IMHO -- "why would you do anything but put all your files in an Eclipse project?" -- but you get used to it faster than you'd think. I did :) It also lets them own the turf they're operating with..they can do neat things like auto-jarring and auto-compiling and things you aren't used to in a vi-make-debug cycle but get conveniant really fast.

      • Re:You can't even open a file! (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        It is a little arrogant IMHO -- "why would you do anything but put all your files in an Eclipse project?"

        I had that thought, too, until I realized that it's a layer of abstraction... think of the workspace dir as a working directory. Your source files can reside on another server and be accessed via CVS, WebDAV, FTP, whatever; when accessed, they get copied to the working directory for local access. Working with a local filesystem is just a special case where your working directory is the same as a local filesystem directory.

        That all said, I still agree that it's amazingly annoying that you can't just open and edit a file :-/

    • no. the files are imported to the project's dir located in the workspace.

      but yes you have to import.. on windows this can be done by drag drop.. dunno about *nix

      oh and if you just need syntax coloring, try the included swt samples. one of them can open a java file a display them with eclipse' sysntax coloring

    • Part of the reason this is done is because Eclipse maintains a history of your files, a la CVS. So if you want to compare what your file looked like last Thursday to your current version, you can. The import requirement bugged me at first, too, but it's really not that big of a deal, especially once you start doing all of your work with Eclipse. After that you just create files in the project and build an Ant script to push them to wherever they need to go.

      • But the point has nothing to do with the fact that it *can* track your history in its own greedy way. The point is, there is no way around it.

        What I want to associate .java files so I can poen them in my favorite IDE, say Eclipse 2.0? That way, I can double-click ona file, click a hyper-link to source code, extract and view a .java file from a .ZIP file, etc. and veiw it in my IDE.

        With Eclipse, this is a step harder, probablyr equiring some scripting. Therte is no reason for them to require that every file go through their BigBrogther Filter just for me to look at it. Its a nice idea to offer it, but a very BAD idea to require it.
    • Ah, it is not quite that evil... this is very much like IBM's Visual Age for Java -- handled things at the method level, cool smalltalk jvm with unholy debug tricks, and many versioning tools. It was very hard to switch into that type of thinking, however. It is worth noting IBM scrapped VisualAge and are betting the farm on Eclipse to power their Websphere studio, so this does not seem so strange from my view. If they add the debugging they had in VA, this should rock.

      Wish other EJB containers were supported better for those of us who pound code for Weblogic, Websphere, Jboss, etc... Great if you are doing Websphere (with the Websphere add on), not had very much luck with Weblogic, a little better with Jboss.

  • bloated this is, taking up about 40 MB of memory.. on a 128MB system running at 800MHz this is so slow it's user unfriendly.

    where are the days of efficient coding?

    loz
    • Your ideas about memory usage are outdated. Name an application that you think wasn't bloated, and I'll point out the additional capabilities that modern programs provide.

      Once you increase your RAM to 256MB or 512MB, you'll find Eclipse will perform just fine. I run it on a 450MHz PIII with 512MB, and it's as fast as any GUI editor ever is.

  • ive just downloaded eclipse, interesting platform, but is there no support for java applets? java apps seems to work fine tho...

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