Eclipse Foundation Releases Open-Source Theia IDE - Compatible with VS Code Extensions

"After approximately seven years in development, the Eclipse Foundation's Theia IDE project is now generally available," writes ADT magazine, "emerging from beta to challenge Microsoft's similar Visual Studio Code (VS Code) editor." The Eclipse Theia IDE is part of the Eclipse Cloud DevTools ecosystem. The Eclipse Foundation calls it "a true open-source alternative to VS Code," which was built on open source but includes proprietary elements, such as default telemetry, which collects usage data...

Theia was built on the same Monaco editor that powers VS Code, and it supports the same Language Server Protocol (LSP) and Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP) that provide IntelliSense code completions, error checking and other features. The Theia IDE also supports the same extensions as VS Code (via the Open VSX Registry instead of Microsoft's Visual Studio Code Marketplace), which are typically written in TypeScript and JavaScript. There are many, many more extensions available for VS Code in Microsoft's marketplace, while "Extensions for VS Code Compatible Editors" in the Open VSX Registry number 3,784 at the time of this writing...

The Eclipse Foundation emphasized another difference between its Theia IDE and VS Code: the surrounding ecosystem/community. "At the core of Theia IDE is its vibrant open source community hosted by the Eclipse Foundation," the organization said in a news release. "This ensures freedom for commercial use without proprietary constraints and fosters innovation and reliability through contributions from companies such as Ericsson, EclipseSource, STMicroelectronics, TypeFox, and more. The community-driven model encourages participation and adaptation according to user needs and feedback."

Indeed, the list of contributors to and adopters of the platform is extensive, also featuring Broadcom, Arm, IBM, Red Hat, SAP, Samsung, Google, Gitpod, Huawei and many others.
The It's FOSS blog has some screenshots and a detailed rundown.

ADT magazine stresses that there's also an entirely distinct (but related) project called the Eclipse Theia Platform (not IDE) which differs from VS Code by allowing developers "to create desktop and cloud IDEs using a single, open-source technology stack" [that can be used in open-source initiatives]. The Eclipse Theia platform "allows developers to customize every aspect of the IDE without forking or patching the code... fully tailored for the needs of internal company projects or for commercial resale as a branded product."

Being Eclipse

[dbialac]

Being that it was Eclipse that made emacs seem light and nimble, with Theia do the same for Eclipse?

Just use (n)Vim

[Forty Two Tenfold]

I use vim [blog.jez.io], by the way.

Eclipse - wasting insane amount of RAM and disk

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

since 2001. Truly an icon of the bloatware age.

Having said that, VSCode, being Electron, is quite the obscene resource pig too, so the two compete in the same space so-to-speak.

Incidentally, if you use VSCode, I highly recomment VSCodium [vscodium.com], which is VSCode with Microsoft's spyware ripped out.

Re:

[dinfinity]

Eclipse - wasting insane amount of RAM and disk since 2001. Truly an icon of the bloatware age.

I've moved on to IntelliJ IDEs for a while now, but is that still actually true? When was the last time you used it?

Re:

[evil_aaronm]

I use Eclipse - in the form of NXP's MCUXpresso - all the time, and it doesn't seem to overly bog down my Apple M2 Pro with 32 GB of ram. I also run Mbed Studio, and sometimes Segger Embedded Studio, simultaneously, sometimes, along with my usual desktop apps - including lots of web pages in Safari - and I haven't had to shut other things down so I can maintain nominal performance. "Memory Pressure" for all of that is still in the green. If Eclipse *was* bad, it doesn't seem so, now.

Tried both side by side

[big-giant-head]

I had vscode with Go plugin and a couple of themes .. installed theia ( it's looks almost EXACTLY like vscode) the same Go plugin was available and I installed 2 similar sized themes just to keep things even. Loaded some go code and the vscode running the latest version was about 120 MB more. Theia was 544MB , Vscode was 648MB. This was on Win 11. So I'd call that just about a push, 120MB is not enough difference to be the deciding factor. IMO

Re:

[organgtool]

120MB is 22% more. If 22% is not a big deal, then please contact me before taking out your next mortgage.

Javascript

[Gravis Zero]

Fair warning, this IDE is entirely written in JavaScript and executes from a Docker container. If your system is fairly modern and has multiple gigabytes of RAM and processing power to spare then it should not be a problem. If you're some old guy with an old computer then don't even bother. *shakes fist at internet clouds* 16GB of RAM is enough for any machine!

Re:Javascript

[fluffernutter]

Golden rule of programming: Just because you can write things in language X does not always mean you should. This is like someone using Python for an integrated system. Python isn't even great for a regular desktop UI. Python has its uses, but those aren't it.

Makes me think the people who did this are quite inexperienced.

Re: Javascript

[ArmoredDragon]

I just write everything in rust, and nobody complains.

Re: Javascript

[Viol8]

Given they run it in a docker container they either believe its hopelessly bug ridden and hence a security risk, or they're container bandwagon jumping just because. Either way I wouldn't go near this thing.

Re:

[mcnewman]

I remember a note from school that said: Choose a programming language according to the specific task. Performance, platform, scalability, task specialization, ecosystem, and your experience are key factors. In programming school, I often encountered java-assignment tasks I couldn't solve, and finding answers on https://essays.edubirdie.com/java-assignment [edubirdie.com] helped me a lot in my studies. Understanding all these aspects will help you make informed decisions and succeed in projects.

Re:

[DaftVader]

The other issue with containerised dev tools is when you spend ages trying to work out how it's using a version of python you don't even have installed on your system. I'll never install a snap/fatpak version of a program again if I can avoid it.

Re:

[slack_justyb]

If you're some old guy with an old computer then don't even bother. *shakes fist at internet clouds* 16GB of RAM is enough for any machine!

You know what's crazy? This is where the AS/400 (now called IBM i) is heading for development. [github.io] There's several [visualstudio.com] plugins [visualstudio.com] for the IBM i [visualstudio.com] available for theia/vscode.

Combined with the ability to manage deployment with git [ibm.com] and the ability to have node.js call down into legacy COBOL/RPGIII programs [npmjs.com] there's a lot of modernizing for the old platform out there. Not to mention that RPGLE has been modernized as a language [rpgpgm.com]. No longer is the programming language fixed columnar format, but now resembles more like Pasca

Re:Javascript only partially true ....

[big-giant-head]

It is written in JS. EXACTLY LIKE VSCODE!! On the desktop it runs in electron, again just like vscode. However the Docker Image is for running your own browser based IDE if you want or need to.

Re:

[Gravis Zero]

Yeah... both sound awful.

So it's clone of VS code?

[codebase7]

Theia was built on the same Monaco editor that powers VS Code

I'm not sure that's what people wanted. If they want to use VS code, it's just as OSS as Theia.

built on open source but includes proprietary elements, such as default telemetry

So they included the thing that people build VS Code from source to get rid of....*facepalm*.

At the core of Theia IDE is its vibrant open source community hosted by the Eclipse Foundation

While it may be all and good for a community, more fragmentation wasn't needed in the OSS IDE space. If anything a competent IDE that didn't crash when debugging or have weird limitations was what was prescribed....

The Eclipse Theia platform "allows developers to customize every aspect of the IDE without forking or patching the code

VS Code is already too customizable. As in, you need to download multiple extensions just to get some sem

Don't get the dealio..

[fluffernutter]

I don't get what the big deal is about VS code. I tried to do bash scripting with it and I had bash scripting plugins installed, but there wasn't even an outline of the code nor was it able to find other occurrences of symbols. Maybe I missed something, but it wasn't that big of a deal and I just got through what I needed to do without it. I have used it with Javascript for node.js reactive stuff and it didn't seem like it had a lot of ways to navigate around the code.

Re:

[NotEmmanuelGoldstein]

... what I needed to do without it.

Your compiler application needs to support the entire tool-chain. VSX Registry doesn't identify plug-ins as lexer/syntax highlighters or compiler front-ends. Thus, it is difficult to use Theia as a stand-alone code-editor and the compiler front-end must be manually configured. Also, the Eclipse/Theia workflow is based on projects so editing a stand-alone file may be fiddly.

Use Notepad++ [Win only] or CUDAtext (SyncWrite) or Pulsar (Atom) code-editor, instead.

Re:

[fluffernutter]

Actually Notepad++ is what I ended up using, come to think of it!

Nice. A little late, but nice anyhow.

[Qbertino]

Finally having a full blown web ide as FOSS project is a good thing. I thought the project had died since it's been ages that I heard about it. Apparently they've finally finished it.

For those of you who don't get all the excitement: It's basically an IDE that runs in your browser. As FOSS, unlike existing solutions. Given that Atom, VS Code and the likes are entirely built with web technologies, this isn't too far fetched. Glad they finally made it happen. Looking forward to giving this a try.

Re: Nice. A little late, but nice anyhow.

[Viol8]

What's so exciting about an IDE that runs in a browser? Browser based apps are almost always shit compared to the desktop equivalent even if the latter is also written in JS.

Re:

[sanf780]

I noticed how MS Teams and Visual Studio Code are right now just web browsers using MS WebView2 (equivalent to electron). The new MS Outlook is also MS WebView2, and I assume the rest of the MS Office software is going to be WebView2 at some point of time.

Eclipse

[ledow]

Spent a good hour trying to get it to do useful things with the CDT (which is the only part of Eclipse that I actually use).

Compared to local Eclipse Classic from even 10-15 years ago, it's basically worthless.

It's always the case - as an amateur but capable programmer in a number of languages - that setting up or migrating a dev environment (including a decent IDE) takes FAR LONGER than even getting the handle on a new language.

It amazes me that nobody has improved this area yet.

Even the latest offline Ecl