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Programming Open Source

Eclipse Foundation Unveils Open Source Alternative to Microsoft's 'Visual Studio Code' IDE (sdtimes.com) 67

Posted by EditorDavid from the IDE-ideas dept.
"The Eclipse Foundation just released version 1.0 of an open-source alternative to Visual Studio Code called Eclipse Theia," reports SD Times: Theia is an extensible platform that allows developers to create multi-language cloud and desktop IDEs, allowing them to create entirely new developer experiences.

According to the Eclipse Foundation, the differences between Theia and Visual Studio Code are that Theia has a more modular architecture, Theia was designed from the ground to run on desktop and cloud, and Theia was developed under community-driven and vendor-neutral governance of the Eclipse Foundation. The Theia project was started by Ericsson and TypeFox in 2016, and since then it has become an integral part of cloud solutions globally. The project approached the Eclipse Foundation about becoming a potential host in 2019.

Early contributors to the project include ARM, Arduino, EclipseSource, Ericsson, Google Cloud, IBM, Red Hat, SAP, and TypeFox.
"We are thrilled to see Eclipse Theia deliver on its promise of providing a production-ready, vendor-neutral, and open source framework for creating custom and white-labeled developer products," announced Mike Milinkovich, the Eclipse Foundation's executive director. "Visual Studio Code is one of the world's most popular development environments. Not only does Theia allow developers to install and reuse VS Code extensions, it provides an extensible and adaptable platform that can be tailored to specific use cases, which is a huge benefit for any organization that wants to deliver a modern and professional development experience. Congratulations to all the Theia committers and contributors on achieving this milestone."

InfoWorld points out that "thus far Theia is intended to be fitted into third-party products. An end-user version is on the roadmap for release later this year."

But programming columnist Mike Melanson notes that "Chances are, you've already run into Theia without even realizing it, as it already serves as the basis for Red Hat's CodeReady Workspaces, the Eclipse Foundation's own Eclipse Che, and Google Cloud Shell."
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Eclipse Foundation Unveils Open Source Alternative to Microsoft's 'Visual Studio Code' IDE More

Eclipse Foundation Unveils Open Source Alternative to Microsoft's 'Visual Studio Code' IDE

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  • VisualStudio Code is already open source (Score:5, Informative)

    by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Saturday April 04, 2020 @03:37PM (#59908406)

    "Open Source Alternative" implies that it's an OSS alternative to closed-source software. It's not. Visual Studio Code is opensource, available on github under the MIT license:

    https://github.com/microsoft/v... [github.com]

    • Vscode is so open-source, in fact, that you can just pick and choose a whole bunch of itâ(TM)s components (like the actual text editor, Monaco) and bundle it all together into a different thing and call it your own.

      They didnâ(TM)t even bother to change the icons, ffs.

      • Vscode is so open-source, ...

        Actually Visual Studio Code (the code editor) isn't open source at all. It's the same as Google Chrome; it's a proprietary application which is based off an open source "Code - OSS" [github.com] project. The FOSS version is vscodium [github.com] which is equivalent to Chromium - stripped of proprietary Microsoft features like telemetry. It seems that Theia offers online / web based editing and it's written in typescript so it's not the same code base as "Code - OSS".

        • Re: VisualStudio Code is already open source (Score:4, Interesting)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Saturday April 04, 2020 @06:47PM (#59908900) Homepage Journal

          It's not the same as Chrome because Chrome includes features that Chromium does not. VS Code doesn't have any additional features, just telemetry and Microsoft trademarks.

        • vscode _is_ open source, here's the MIT license: https://github.com/microsoft/v... [github.com]. just because it has telemetry doesn't make it not open-source. (otherwise Debian wouldn't be open-source). it is written in typescript, also has web editing support. the text editor from vscode (https://github.com/microsoft/monaco-editor) is what's used in Theia.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Baki ( 72515 )

          Indeed, I must run the non-OSS version of vscode, in order for the "remote" plugin to work.
          This is what we use to do home office at the moment.
          You cannot use the real OSS version for that.
          I do not like telemetry being sent to a company, and hope that this will be a good alternative.

    • Not only that, but I'm curious how this differs from the Eclipse platform they already offer. Cloud integration maybe? I'm not sure how important a cloud IDE is considering there are already tools out there that deal with team development, building, and release. This seems like an answer looking for a problem. Also, isn't VS Code the introduction to more advance IDEs like VS? I wish them the best of luck and maybe I'll try this out if it can work well with Unity or Arduino IDE, otherwise, I'll wait on the s

      • Re: VisualStudio Code is already open source (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Saturday April 04, 2020 @08:31PM (#59909104) Homepage

        Also, isn't VS Code the introduction to more advance IDEs like VS?

        That is a bit of an open question. At least for .NET Core and ASP.NET Core Microsoft is now deprecating their closed source counterparts and uniting it under one open source .NET 5 [microsoft.com]. If you still call them M$ take a read, I didn't see any pigs flying by outside but I hear Satan issued a blizzard warning. The only fully cross platform IDE to go with that is VS Code.

        So I'm thinking it's on the same path to eventually become the new unified Visual Studio, not a hook to get you upgraded. They've already ditched their own version control tools for git [microsoft.com]. What they want developers hooked on is Azure. They're not going to stop using MS Office, Outlook, Sharepoint etc. to keep office drones hooked on Windows, but for developers they got bigger fish to fry.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        VS Code and this new Eclipse Theia are a bit different to traditional IDEs. Basically they are more of an editor/code browser with plugin support for everything beyond that.

        This has a few upsides. First it means that it's now much easier for people to contribute to them. No need to dig into the source code of the IDE itself and get patches accepted, they can just build all the functionality they need in plugins written in their preferred language (as long as it can compile down to Javascript). It also means

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Not so fast. Many components of VSCode are propietary, including the C++ linter&autocomplete.
      Being on Github doesn't mean "opensource", they are very happy to redistribute binaries.

      • Re:VisualStudio Code is already open source (Score:5, Informative)

        by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Saturday April 04, 2020 @04:27PM (#59908504)

        The MIT license applies to the entire repository. The C++ support extension is in a different repository that is also under the MIT license.

        https://github.com/microsoft/v... [github.com]

        If you can actually point to a specific part of Visual Studio Code that is not open source, go ahead. I'm not saying there isn't anything, but all the core components certainly appear to be open source.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Speaking of which I wonder how good the C support in this new software is. It's a bit basic in VS Code.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Intellicode (the C++ support extension) is not open source.

          If you just read what you yourself linked:
          "The extension has platform-specific binary dependencies, "

          Where is the code for these platform specific binary dependencies?
          It's not there. Microsoft is not making that opensource.

          • the C++ extension is not vscode, it's the C++ extension.

            the non-free debian repo isn't open-source, either. that doesn't make debian itself non-open-source.

    • I was originally going to blame the article's writer, but I noticed that even in the Eclipse Foundations' press release, they say

      a true open source alternative to Microsoft’s popular Visual Studio Code

      This phrase back-handedly implies Visual Studio Code is somehow not a "true" open source product, which of course is rather misleading.

      I mean, I think it's great to have competing alternatives, but this seems like a tiny bit of FUD they're flinging.

  • I was hoping that the Eclipse foundation can get the source code of IBM Websphere Business Modeler for Eclipse BPMn2 :(

  • Eclipse? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Saturday April 04, 2020 @03:55PM (#59908448) Homepage

    So.... how many gigabytes is it and how slow does it run?

    • Re:Eclipse? (Score:5, Funny)

      by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Saturday April 04, 2020 @04:07PM (#59908468)
      It has a memory footprint of 13.7 Emacsen and a run time of 4.31 Emacsen.

      • It has a memory footprint of 13.7 Emacsen and a run time of 4.31 Emacsen.

        And since we all know how horribly bloated Emacs is compared to Vi I don't think this new IDE will run on my workstation.

        *runs frantically to the door to try and escape*

    • Another victim of Ecl .... wait ... wait ... ipse. Oh, hang on, it needs to be compiled AGAIN ( WHY WAS THAT ?! )

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      VSCode is not particularly light either.
      It uses about 10x as much RAM as Sublime Text and about 100x as much as Vim. It is also noticeably slower than Sublime.

      • That's because VS Code is an electron app. You're basically running an entire instance of the Chromium browser to edit a text file.

  • Now we need a Microsoft-compatible operating system. We obviously can't use this one:

    Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. [networkworld.com] "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC."

    Multiple Problems Reported With New Windows 10 Updates [forbes.com].
    • I just use Wine. Works for me.

    • Odd to say but Visual Studio Code is more similiar to atom.io which is a fork of it's node.js framework editor. VIsual Studio code is available on MacOSX and yes even Linux from Microsoft's own server.

      I would imagine someone probably ported it to FreeBSD by now too but I do not use that as a desktop OS these days.

      Theia from the screenshots looks to be a blob based java2EE web server where you use a web browser to run your coding sessions so I guess it runs on Linux with a supported correct version of Java b

      • Java really does suck and is so tied to windows and Internet Explorer these days

        Say what?

        Not counting Minecraft and IntelliJ and its subsets, I would guess Windows is the *smallest* platform for Java. And you must be just about the last poor bastard running Java in a browser.

  • "Not only does Theia allow developers to install and reuse VS Code extensions, it provides an extensible and adaptable platform that can be tailored to specific use cases, which is a huge benefit for any organization that wants to deliver a modern and professional development experience" So how is it different from VS Code? Is 'no Microsoft contribution' the only selling point?

    • Is 'no Microsoft contribution' the only selling point?

      Sounds like a pretty big selling point in any case.

      • If you hate Visual Studio code (which is not based off Visual Studio) then swtich to it's parent forkf ATOM.IO. It is node.js as well and has Linux and MacOSX ports and is similar to VIsual Studio Code.

  • Am I the only one who thinks these graphically oriented, ridiculously complex IDE's are equivalent to putting the "special needs" kids on the short bus and sending them on frequent field trips? They will have a good time, and they will learn useful information. But kernel developers and other god-like software engineers to not use these tools. Is this mere coincidence?

    • IDE's have their place, but yes, I would not use them exclusively. Many simple tools are often just good enough. IDE's are great when dealing with super large code bases, or many components at once.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jma05 ( 897351 )

        There is no reason to not use an IDE if you are programming more than a few minutes at a time (assuming the language in question has advanced IDEs).

    • Have you used a modern editor?

      These are not based off Visual Studio at all but rather GitHubs Atom.io which also free and supports multiplatforms. They are lightwight editors but have modern features like intellisense, debugger, language, console/shell, and workbenches. The plugin apis are rich where you can add in all the things I mentioned. In essence both node.js editors are 21st century Emacs editors and are lightweight but have things modern programmers are used to.

      They are not pigs like Visual Studio

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jimbo ( 1370 )

        Atom, calls itself a programmers editor yet doesn't support macro recording. I tried using it but had to go back to emacs every time I had to do something repetitive.

    • yeah, you're god-like because you use an old, shitty editor.

      fuck tool, real craftsmen do everything with their teeth.

    • On the contrary, your position is the "short bus" one. The idea that your vim/emacs whatever "god-tier" editor that lets you write code at speeds only modern processors could feasibly handle in the terminal with a bajillion customization is your idea. That's right, your idea. An idea that you're pushing off to everyone with a smug sense of superiority.

      The code written in an IDE is the same as the code written in notepad, or vi, or emacs, or whatever you want. Cool if you can do without all of that stuff lik

  • the instruction have line that says:
    Also make sure your python --version points to a Python 2.x installation.

    Not so modern. However, competition is good!

  • For a 100% open source build, there is vscodium. And Flatpak has an vscode.oss Edition that does the same.

    The main difference is, that vscode ships with telemetry and the open source build does not.

  • Maybe I'm not the target audience for this stuff, but for my (relatively modest) code editor needs I use Geany.

    Mind you, I just program in C and don't really do much with GUI stuff except when I'm really forced into it.

    Maybe if I had more of a GUI or web-based focus something like this would be up my alley, but I don't.

    • I don't like IDEs either, compilers are slow and resource-hungry, which is the opposite of what I want my text editor to be.

      The feature that is useful in all those new text editors (sublime, atom, vscode) is fast fuzzy search by filename when using ctrl+p.

      Also they do split horizontally and vertically, which is often an afterthought in older editors.

      Really those are the only two features I need.

  • Can't be much left. Eclipse wasn't much of an editor to start with.

  • Can someone tell me the real benefit of Eclipse over other IDEs (other than the fact that it's FOSS). I'm not much of a programmers but I've looked at Eclipse a few times, once to get me through a uni course that required Java, and far more recently as an overall IDE to develop basic ARM software, either directly on a small Microchip controller or indirectly through integration of Arduino.

    The exercise ended in frustration. Multiple different instructions online that each took different steps to try and achi

    • Can someone tell me the real benefit of Eclipse over other IDEs

      Some computers have more memory than they would need for common tasks. Eclipse will ensure that those machines are using all of the memory.

    • I have used Eclipse since version 2.x and am VERY familiar with it (had at one time worked on an RCP application in a job and even wrote an OSS plugin more recently). I use it mostly for core Java development and C/C++ natives that go with that Java. Recently I'm using for Python as well with CodeMix.

      I'm in my 40s and been coding since 13. I've also used IDEA and briefly PyCharm (switched to VS Code and use that for Python) and of course Visual Studio when I was working for a Windows C++ application. I spen

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sad_ ( 7868 )

        Eclipse IDE is like Linux distributions, only worse: with Linux at least there's Ubuntu (and Fedora) that are a bit of 'de facto' standards, but in Eclipse there is no single source offering a curated distribution that works well and also LOOKS well.

        true, there used to be EasyEclipse which was basically an eclipse distro, but the project stopped/failed and a 'fork' didn't succeed in its kickstarter campaign.

  • Prebuild workspace on *.gitpod.io hangs when trying to recover a file. It takes a really loooong time time to load. Not very well made.

  • Funny how the website for Theia looks very, very similar to JetBrains, the makers of IntelliJ, GoLand and PyCharm IDEs...hmmm and didn't IntelliJ replace the Eclipse editor in the Android SDK that Google offer. The famous Google that own Android are now adopting Kotlin also from JetBrains, as a the language for developing Android apps?!

    Sounds like Eclipse org are pissed and just trying way too hard to get back at JetBrains!

  • "Theia" is a really bad name to use. It's not clear how to pronounce it just from looking at it, and I doubt developers are going to flock to it at all. "visual studio code" or "vs code" is just easy to say, easy to understand, not an obscure reference to a fictional planet that people are going to scratch their heads about how to pronounce. It's a really weird choice for a name, and a bad one that won't help its adoption.

  • VB (Score:2)

    by kackle ( 910159 )
    Does it do Visual Basic?
  • I use Eclipse every day and it fails so badly it hurts my face.

    I HATE having to click on the errors and manually delete them in the problems tab and rebuilding. What kind of madness is that?

    Visual Studio was recently voted best IDE. I've used it for years also.

    Why would I choose an Eclipse anything over a VS anything?

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