reviews of Eclipse?

Posted Feb 6, 2004 2:19 UTC (Fri) by stevenj (guest, #421)
Parent article: Red Hat CTO: Can Eclipse End 'Java Apartheid'? (eWeek)

We've been hearing a lot about Eclipse recently, but I found their website too buzzword-heavy to easily evaluate; it would be great if LWN could do a review of it.

In particular, if Tiemann is serious about using Eclipse to help bridge the gap between Java developers and the rest of the free-software/open-source community, I'd like to see a few questions answered, in no particular order:

Suppose I currently use make/automake, Emacs, gdb/ddd, etcetera for my project (say in C/C++ with various directories of source files, maybe for GNOME or KDE if it has a GUI). How easy is it to switch to Eclipse, and how would I benefit?
- (No, "integration" is not a benefit in itself; be more concrete.)
Free-software developers aren't like commercial developers: they distribute source, not just binaries. If I develop my program in Eclipse, how easy is it to distribute an autoconf'ed tarball that users can simply ./configure && make && make install on any GNU/Linux (and most Unix-like) systems?
- No, we don't want no stinkin' byte-codes.
If I'm using Eclipse, can I still work mainly from the command-line if I want? (e.g. from remote login)
What if I currently generate part of my sources with the help of Perl scripts, etcetera. This is easy with make; how about with Eclipse?
What is the status of using Eclipse with a completely free/open-source toolchain, e.g. gcc/gcj/classpath from top to bottom? Last I heard, Eclipse compiled with gcj was still alpha or pre-alpha quality, and that doesn't address the question of how easy it is to use gcc/gcj from Eclipse.
I gather that Eclipse by itself doesn't actually do much—it's just a "platform" for building IDE's. What are the current best-of-breed plugins to satisfy all the needs of the typical free-software developer?

Anyone else have any questions they'd like to ask? Is there a document somewhere I've missed that explains all this?

reviews of Eclipse?

Posted Feb 6, 2004 10:03 UTC (Fri) by biehl (subscriber, #14636) [Link]

Hi,

I'll have a go at your questions.

1) Not easy - the C/C++ editor and toolchain (CDT) http://www.eclipse.org/cdt/ is quite alpha-quality (my subjective feel)

2) Well, when the CDT matures - then this will in all likelyhood be a feature. The CDT is aiming for open integration of tools - and especially Redhat-hackers are pushing for autoconf/automake integration.

3) Yes - exactly as if you are used to the niceties of Xemacs.

4) As make is integrated it should be easy - you could also just run the script from a terminal or a button in eclipse and do a F5 (refresh).
- The eclipse way would be to write a small plugin for that - maybe then hook it to a key-combo (my colleagues tell me that it is very easy to implement)

5) GCJ is not integrated in Eclipse - i anticipate that when the CDT-builder infrastructure works, then someone will find out how to hook up the JAVA-editor to the make backend.
I dont know about the quality of GCJ compiled eclipse - but I'll be looking for it in Fedora core 2 ( http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/schedule/ )

6) Few - unless you are a JAVA-free software developer ( http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=198 )

As I said Redhat seems to be pushing for integration of the usual FOSS tools and AFAIK have integrated some support for hacking GNOME libraries.

Hope this helps - all knowledge is from the CDT-dev mailinglist, which I read just out of curiosity.

-Anders

reviews of Eclipse?

Posted Feb 12, 2004 14:47 UTC (Thu) by ohanssen (guest, #2761) [Link]

I ask: Who (or what company) benefit from a division between Java and
Open Source communities?

And when mentioning Eclipse, dont forget the Apache project.