Eclipse Makes Java Development on the Mac Easier

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.'"

NetBeans??

[bogaboga]

I heard that something called NetBeans was also a Java IDE and that it's better, easier and has plug-ins...not to mention a large community behind it. I will say one thing though: I am no Java developer so I cannot contribute meaningfully!

I guess a better conclusion would be a disclaimer: -

I do not know what I am talking about!

Uhh, Netbeans

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell? Ever heard of or used Netbeans? Eclipse is done after everyone switches to Netbeans. I can't believe this made it through the moderator. Hold on, don't I have some moderator points?

Re:Contradicting Itself?

[Em Adespoton]

To add to these other comments:

...Java development environment to Mac OS X that provides a more consistent and easier to develop cross-platform experience...

This is supposed to be a PLUS on MacOS X? If you want a consistent cross-platform experience, use NetBeans. If you want something that actually functions as expected on OS X and is consistent with the Mac UI, use xCode. The only plus I can see is that people who regularly use Eclipse can now use it on OS X. But wait... they've been able to do that already for years.

I'm curious why this is being pushed...

[Umuri]

At the university i attend as a CS major, there is a big push in the CS classes to use the Eclipse IDE, and trying to use any other one is frowned upon and teachers try to pressure you into switching due to some hidden policy.

My question is anyone have an earthly idea why eclipse is being pushed so much?

From what i've tried, there are other IDEs that are more widely used/accepted as efficient IDEs, and others that i just plain work faster in and are less full of clutter. So did eclipse use to be some industry standard at a forbes 500 or do they have marketing trolls or what?

-Confused Student

Re:Uhh, Netbeans

[nahpets77]

I'm curious as to why you say everyone will switch to Netbeans. My experience has been that Eclipse is preferred over Netbeans more often than not, from students programming in a university environment to EDA vendors for embedded systems providing their own plugins.

Well, it works great

[DavidApi]

This article interested me greatly, as I have just recently secured a contract working for a project based on Java and Oracle (developed in Windows). I've taken the code, installed Eclipse for Mac (J2EE), changed the DB connection to MySQL (running on my Mac) and got it running.

And pretty mostly, while I've relearnt Java (from a lapse of 8 years) and got to grips with all the cool and new stuff (like Hibernate, JUnit, Swing, Ant, JBoss etc), I've been able to run the tutorials I've found without too much tweaking.

Now, I'm not a great coder, but getting the pieces to work (like all mentioned above, plus things like Derby) hasn't been a big drama. The cross-platform dream really works! The book I bought, "eclipse Web Tools Platform" published by Addison Wesley (which I highly recommend), isn't focussed on Eclipse Development using a Mac. The examples and diagrams are all Windows looking - BUT I can follow them on my Mac, and get the same results.

I can't compare Eclipse to anything else, but it's doing the job.

PS I'm actually more a Perl programmer - so I thought I'd search for a Perl plugin. Well, there is! EPIC. Easy install (like the other plugins for Eclipse I've grabbed), and so I can do Perl in Eclipse too.

And finally, after reading the foreword in the above mentioned book, I like the philosophy of the whole Eclipse project. It's a worthy project to support - regardless of what platform you use and favour.

Go Eclipse! And Thanks to all the people who're making it happen!

Re:NetBeans??

[doktorjayd]

so your eclipse hotshot couldnt:

- check out from source control
- select 'source' folders from the checked out spot, and right click to 'use as source folder' ( do this for test classes too )
- define where to spit the compiled classes to
- select the libraries in the checked out project and 'add to build path'
- double click build.xml, select target to run and press play...

dare i say your eclipse guy may have been bluffing.

i've come across all sorts of good|bad|ugly project layouts in the java ( and c, and perl, and .Shit ) world, but with eclipse, thats pretty much all that you ever need to do to get a build going which has not had the eclipse metadata added to source control.

getting the project running inside the ide can be a different story, from as easy as selecting the class with public static void Main(String[] args) in it , through to loading up a plugin with a j2ee container like jboss ( or just create a debug target with all the jars in a tomcat release and use org.apache.catalina.bootstrap.Startup as the main class...), and hooking in your web app as directed by the wizards.

what i find really out of whack in the parent, grandparent, and all the other little side fires going on is that the argument eclipse is being cast as Netbeans.

i've been working java professional services for years, in and around dozens of client sites with all sorts of java developers at different levels, and i tell ya, the flamewars are all eclipse vs. idea intelliJ.

netbeans? hmmm. netbeans 4 was nice in that it was all worked around ant, but the down side was that each project you create ( and get an autogenerated build.xml ) always ended up with these tenticles that meant you needed all the netbeans libraries around just to get a build going, namely through all the -targets and the taskdefs they wired in.

netbeans was a decent ide for standard swing|awt dev a number of years ago, but had a nasty habit of generating a metric assload of .sidefiles for every gui class that you built, as well as wiring in //##START_SECTION comments all over the shop which of course were completely useless outside of netbeans. does it still do that? maybe i grab a recent bundle some time and have another look.

then theres getting back to the original post.

this is not news.

eclipse has run on OSX for years. the SWT libraries have sometimes lagged a few months behind other platforms in the past ( windows & linux are usually out at the same time ), but this has changed over the last year or 2, and the major platforms are now pretty much all out at the same time.

Hopefully Eclipse devs learn something from Apple

[Angelwrath]

It's nice to see Eclipse for the Mac, but Eclipse could learn a LOT about the user interface and experience from Mac apps. For example, plain ordinary "File Open" and "File Close" and "Import" features, workspaces be damned. Eclipse's current way of handling the opening and importing of source code is excessively difficult, and needs to be changed. The "workspaces" concept is idiotic when the file / folder system works just fine. Hell, BlueJ, another coding program, kicks the crap out of Eclipse in this specific regard and it's used to teach 1st year comp sci students!

Yes, just like the Microsoft Mac team, Eclipse devs could learn a lot from the Mac, I think this will be a good step for them.

Re:apples and oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

Netbeans pales in comparison to Eclipse in terms of performance and expandability. Its almost impossible to tailor their build.xml files because they include so much generated crap (particularly if you are developing GUI applications).

You've never used Eclipse, have you? Eclipse's generated ANT scripts are even worse, requiring build scripts that are internal to Eclipse and tasks that only exist while Eclipse is running. This makes building them from the command line impossible.

But worse than that, Eclipse doesn't even generate these build files automatically. Instead it just compiles the code on its own without ever creating any build script. If you want a build script, you have to "export" the project.

but when it comes to stability, portability, strong type checking, etc java blows ruby out of the water.

Strong type checking? You require strong type checking? Java's strong type checking sucks. Java generics are a bad joke. You want real strong type checking, try using Ada. Somehow I doubt you really need strong type checking of the form Java provides. The rest of your point are just random buzzwords being spouted.

While I expect you're right that Java is more appropriate for some edge-cases, Ruby is almost certainly the better choice in the vast majority of cases. I've lost count of how many projects I've seen to replace Java monstrosities with simple, clean Ruby versions.

i agree with you that cvs is outdated but eclipse supports svn via the subclipse plugin.

So Eclipse doesn't support it natively and from what I've seen you have to compile native code to get the plugin to work. (Unless you use 32-bit Windows where they've precompiled it.) So much for Java being cross-platform.

take away .NET (which is hardly portable) and you only have ONE platform-independant language which is specifically targetted at enterprise-level development : Java. The massive improvements that the JVM has undergone, the Hotspot technology (which yields awesome performance) and support for generics, embedded scripting languages, annotations and AOP nullify the traditional arguments that java is slow or antiquated.

I find it highly ironic that you slam .Net and then explain how Java is slowly morphing into it. Try actually using .Net, just about everything you just explained originated in .Net and was stolen by Sun.

Re:Eclipse on Mac OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

Woah now, settle down kids.

Neither one of you make sense. Obj-C is for OS X app development. Java is for server app development.

Sheesh.

Eclipse RCP is a poor choice for Mac Applications

[Karl the Pagan]

The Eclipse 3.3 RCP does not allow developers to build correct Mac application bundles. It forces the developer to place resources outside the bundle in the parent directory. The reason given for this was to avoid "user confusion" for troubleshooting settings and plugins. First, since experienced Mac OS X users know that you can right click on bundles to open them this justification only applies to the Eclipse authors involved. Second, troubleshooting Eclipse framework settings and plugins is NOT something which needs to be easily accessible to end-users of an RCP application! After having my own issues deploying an RCP update site and discovering this limitation in OSX bundles I am avoiding the Eclipse RCP for any of my own projects.