The Eclipse Visual Editor project seems to be dead, no commits, no updates. Any one know what is happening?
Update 2: The project has been archived (i.e. dead) since June 2011 again.
Update: The project has been revived and is now under active development again.
Its pretty much dead due to a lack of developer support. Here are some recent posts from their mailing list talking about a lack of movement on the project.
What's happening? It's called NetBeans, and it's already happened.
I'm going to get voted down for this but they know it's true. I love eclipse and have used it religiously since I started Java. I'm not saying I like Netbeans, it's just all I hear whenever the concept of a Java visual editor is brought up.
The Jigloo plug-in for Eclipse is a pretty great alternative to the Visual Editor. Though still not quite as nice as the Netbeans GUI editor it is fairly robust and fully featured, especially compared to what was available in the Visual Editor plug-in. Definitely should give it a shot.
Actually NetBeans has gotten MUCH MUCH better. I've used Eclipse, Netbeans and IntelliJ for a few years each, and NetBeans is at least as good (performance, usability & features) as the others now.
It's also improving more quickly than the others are.
They have people working full time on alternate language support, so you'll find they have the best Ruby support in the industry, and I believe Python is about to become that good as well.
Of course, Eclipse still has that crazy-cool todo list that remembers which files you worked on for each bug and can take you back to the set of files/edits for any bug you've worked on, that's really amazing to use and I don't think it's available on either of the other platforms.
--- Revision from years in the future ---
I have used Netbeans more and really have to give the award to Eclipse. The difference has been in vertical programming environments--most will target Eclipse and ignore netbeans. You rarely need these, but when you need them there is often no way around them. If Netbeans does have an equivalent, it's often buggy to the point of not being usable, generally the biggest issue is emulator support.
You won't run into these unless you are working in a specific industry--Android development is one, the primary drive was to support Eclipse, NB seems to trail. Another I've worked on is in the TV/Cable industry.
For raw java development, however, I'd still give Netbeans a little edge because it's the environment that was targeted and supported by sun.
Visual Editor is doing a new release, 1.4, on September 16. Installation instructions for the RC are here:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/VE/Update
FWIW, the project did stall for a while. But there is a new, and relatively diverse group of folks working on it again. Most of the recent work is concerned with making the new release compatible with Eclipse Galileo.
It's officially dead as of May 2011. It's archived here, but slow to download and tricky to install. Instead, there's a new editor, WindowBuilder Pro.
Currentlty Google have Open Sourced the Windows Builder Pro. It seems nice
yeap,
http://www.eclipsezone.com/eclipse/forums/t91368.html
Yes, sadly, it is dead. Looking at the aforementioned email threads regarding it's revival I get the feeling that even if it does get picked up it will quickly collapse under the weight of some new requirements ("make it universal, edit everything from SWT to HTML").
WindowBuilder can be a good alternative. I had several problems with VE and I end up with WindowBuilder who worked for me perfectly.
http://www.eclipse.org/windowbuilder/
Related
I am working on a standalone Eclipse RCP product. My team replaced another team that wrote the infrastructure of the product.
I and my team leader aren't very happy with the Eclipse RCP framework because we feel that it is just very hard to get it to work correctly.
This is because:
The GUI building tools are annoying. XWT is buggy (bindings don't
always work, can't add scrollbars, and this is only the half of it).
SWT also isn't very exciting. I don't like the API and it doesn't
have too many exciting widgets.
Eclipse IDE itself is buggy (we
have to restart it every few hours). We are using eclipse juno. When
we tried to upgrade to luna we ran into some unsolvable issues:
Eclipse Luna: Handlers' #CanExecute methods not called due to wrong context
We have lots of weird bugs (e.g. eclipse looks at wrong selection
service and much more).
Even though there is support and
documentation, we find that it is kind of poor compared to other
solutions out there.
Due to the above, developement of simple
things seem to take too long. We have another .NET product which is
much easier to write.
However, google didn't seem to badmouth eclipse rcp... So I wanted to ask, what do you guys think about it? Do you find it easy to use? Do you find it flexible?
Just want to hear some opinions.
Thanks!!!
I've been going nowhere but in circles trying to understand the odd relationships between and varying levels of "standalone-ness" of these tools.
I've been using Aptana Studio on OSX for about 4 years and been happy with it, however my recent update to 3.6 blew up so many things I ended up rolling back to 3.4 just so I could work.
For better or worse, I do like Aptana, but I'm not bound to it and am now very frustrated with the latest version, specifically that all the python stuff went haywire. Searching for help is painful, as threads and advice are many years old.
So, in way of questions:
can anyone explain the relationship between Eclipse, Aptana, PyDev, and LiClipse? And more importantly:
a recommendation that meets the following criteria
What I need/want is:
something free and open source
with a current and active community
easily themeable with dark colors so I'm not staring at the sun 8 hours a day
tight python features (pep, pylint, ability to jump to references with a keypress, etc)
tight html/css/javascript features
Like I said, I do like Aptana, just frustrated in the apparent lack of a current community and how it seems to be falling apart.
Well, I'm not sure this is a good question for stackoverflow... anyways, I'll try to explain how it goes:
Aptana Studio 3 is an IDE which is currently supported by Appcelerator. Their main focus is currently on supporting the Appcelerator mobile platform (actually that's Titanium Studio, but Aptana Studio 3 is the basis for it -- the languages they aim for are html/css/javascript, which is what's needed for Titanium)... Although they do integrate a pretty old version of PyDev too (as PyDev requires a newer java whereas they're still on an older version of Java, so, I guess it's currently hard for them to keep it up to date).
Back in the day, they supported the development of PyDev, but decided to stop that support some time ago -- there's a bit more history at: http://pydev.blogspot.com.br/2013/03/keeping-pydev-alive-through-crowdfunding.html.
After that, LiClipse (http://www.liclipse.com/) was created out of my frustration to support dark themes and have support for more languages (it was a crowdfunded project -- it should've been an open source project, but didn't reach its goals for that, so, in the end it's closed source, and its revenue is a part of what keeps the PyDev development going on).
And at last, Eclipse is the basis for both platforms -- so, external plugins should integrate nicely into any of those.
Now, on the recommendation front:
LiClipse should meet your dark/python/html/css/javascript issues (its focus on the editors front is on being dark-themed/lightweight and easy to add support for new languages), but it's not completely open source (some parts of it have been made open source though: http://www.liclipse.com/text).
Aptana Studio 3 should still work and give support for the dark/python/html/css/javascript too, but given that they have to convert some things from the PyDev Java to its own version, Python support is always a bit outdated (as for the current community/support, I can't really comment, but I guess you should be able to report problems to them to try to solve the issues you have).
And the other choice (which may be a bit more work to configure) would be using a bare Eclipse and installing PyDev and separate plugins for html/css/javascript (it seems there are multiple available, but I can't really comment on any of those).
Is there any benchmarks or study done comparing these two IDEs in terms of
-- stability
-- developer productivity
-- features
-- performance
-- etc.
I am an Eclipse user (not by choice). Not sure about stability, but performance wise NetBeans is far supperior at least with the lates versions that I worked in; personally, I think NetBeans has enough features to make it a good development environment but I can't tell you for sure, it depends on what is the scope of your task. Overall, eclipse is a good IDE, but NetBeans is just a little better...
Mostly working with eclipse nowadays.
All I can say is M2E is a pain.
With no disrespect intended to the developers of m2e ...
This is the simply the absolute worst plugin for maven. It is slow and it is painful to use.
For big maven projects with more than 70 module components, you can forget about having a quick eclipse evironment.
If you use mvn eclipse:eclipse, the deprecated plugin for configuring eclipse, I believe you are faster with eclipse than with netbeans. Especially when it comes to refactoring.
If instead you use the official m2e plugin ...
Oh my god!
I am answering to this question due to the pure shear pain of waiting for eclipse.
" Invoking CDI Builder" because an #Inject collaborator moved around in the class, triggering a massive build wait time delay... god!
Eclipse! Well... Eclipse is a great IDE for getting started, on small projects, but as projects get enterprise level, and if you use m2e ... oh! you will cry!
And wonder ... how can it be this bad.
Netbeans! Perhaps nota any better in the end.
Last time I used Netbeans, i had two major complaints, that were total deal brekers:
(a) Netbeans was simply awful when dealing with massiven class refactoring.
You change a class name on sub module A, that affects modules B, C and D.
And until you class renaming, move over packages is done, you can go take a coffee, and order a cab.
(b) netbeans had a bug in parsing interfaces, namely there was some sort of regular expression that would take the longest time to run.
So if you can use the old deprecated mvn eclipse:eclipse, you would end up being far better of.
With that said.
The Netbeans debugger compared to the eclipse debugger is light years better.
I prefer the graphics of netbeans and I prefer the simplicity of netbeans.
Just try using the "expressions" where the autocomplete does not work, and you ave to go to "display" to get autcomplete to work and copy it bakc over to expressions!
Eclipse is a patch work, with hundreds of thousands of developers making hundreds of different components of the IDE, leading to an overall result of a total inconsistent product.
Eclipse is a never ending set of settings, just open the preferences and ...
Netbeans, UI is always desing for maximum simplicty.
As I wait for my m2e to finish rebuilding prjects based on whatever whim lead eclipse to start a new build, I start considering again if I should not revisit Netbeans and install the eclipse formatter ...
Eclipse is really in bad shape, In my humble oppinion.
Ther performance of eclipse has to improve 100 fold, especiall eclipse + m2e has to get way way better.
Intelli J - i have never tried.
The best IDE have used so far, is wihout any doubt, Microsfot Visual Code for Javascript and TypeScript.
You use Microsoft Visual Code, and just wonder why eclipse is not like that.
If you are doing Angular Js/Typecipt, simply forget about any other IDE out there. Microsoft Visual Code is the best thing there is, it is fantastic and joy to use.
Blazing fast and light and good looking on every platform of your desire.
But for java + maven, the echo system is a bit lacking on good options.
The man is not supposed to wait for the machine.
A human is always supposed to be slower then a machine ... this is not the case with eclipse m2e, this I can tell you.
The furstration!!!!
Unless you have lots of hardware to throw at it, go with Netbeans.
I have a VM running CentOS 7. At this time, I am only able to allocate 2G ram to the VM, and running Eclipse Oxygen for PHP on it is painfully slow. Netbeans runs just fine in this configuration.
I'm sure some Eclipse devotee would suggest giving the VM more ram which might probably resolve the issue, but unfortunately that is not currently possible.
Another thing that ought to be mentioned is that Eclipse is rather unique in its UI. For example, virtually every editor on the planet uses Ctrl-F to "Find", then function key F3 to "Find Next". Ctrl-G is "Goto line number". Netbeans follows this convention. Eclipse, however, uses Ctrl-K to "Find Next" and Ctrl-L for "Line number".
This won't be an issue if you use Eclipse and nothing else, but if you're like the more typical developer, you use Eclipse when appropriate along with some other tool when appropriate. You will get confused sometimes and use the wrong shortcut. This creates unpredictable problems, particularly if you're unsure what the wrong shortcut just did to your file.
It's not a "performance" issue as per the application, but it slows down the developer. To me, that's just as bad.
Again, some Eclipse devotee might suggest that Eclipse shortcuts can be configured any way you like, which is true, but really, does anybody have that kind of time? Eclipse comes with literally thousands of configuration options, and it's an Internet Search to figure out how to change almost anything.
Netbeans doesn't have thousands of configuration options, although there are things you can tweak. It just sorta mostly works the way you expect out of the box.
To conclude, the actual slowness on less-than-most-super-powerful hardware is probably the biggest thing against Eclipse. I don't know what the code is trying to do, but Netbeans is somehow able to do it with less hardware.
Eclipse and Netbeans are both good IDE (Integrated Development Environment) programs. If you are just a Java, C++, C or Fortran programmer you can use any of them.
If you are WEB base developer (For Example: JSF, Serverlet, Applet) in this case NetBeans is much more powerful then Eclipse.
On the other hand, If you are mobile developer for Android OS, in this case Eclipse is much more powerful then Netbeans.
So it depends on your programming league :)))
I have to choose a sizable (but not too sizable!) project for my next & last term in university. I thought maybe a nice IDE for scala is what the world might need right now :).
Would you like to see an IDE specifically made for scala? Or are you more comfortable using (the already available) plugins for popular (mainly java) IDEs & editors?
What do you think about the whole idea?
P.s. I'd make it open source & would add features one by one, so if it doesn't end in one semester, it won't be a problem from the university perspective.
Actually, not anymore. IntelliJ, Netbeans and Eclipse all have Scala-specific efforts that have more man-hours in it than you could possible start to begin putting in at a last term. And there's two very interesting efforts that were results of projects like that, both of which were made to contribute to any IDE effort: ENSIME and Scala Refactoring.
And, beyond these efforts, most programming editors, such as jEdit or TextMate, also have some Scala support to one degree or another.
So, really, contributing to one of these projects might be a good idea, but making a Scala IDE is not.
For his Masters thesis, Mirko Stocker contributed the refactoring functionality to the Eclipse Scala plugin, see:
http://misto.ch/scala-refactoring-talk-at-scala-days-2010/
Instead of creating an IDE from scratch, why not contribute a major piece of functionality to the Eclipse plugin, all contributions are welcome. For ideas, see tickets.
Or instead of reinventing the wheel.. you can contribute..
http://wiki.netbeans.org/Scala
But I am not sure if it will be somehow enough for your university work. At the same time, as you see, those plug-ins still require a lot of work.
While writing your own IDE you will just trying to solve problems that were already solved and tested. Besides, even if - what kind of IDE is that, which allows you to do
Scala (even if its great) only. So just for simple xml edit of ant file or whatever you will need another tool.
I think Brian Clapper already summed it up nicely.
I'd suggest something like CheckStyle but for Scala might go down well and be reasonable to tackle as a project.
Not a Scala developer but an Eclipse plug-in would probably be a worthy senior project.
Concur. Operating systems, text editors, and IDEs...does the world really need more of them? No. But everyone wants to write one.
If you want to do something useful, as opposed to simply academic, develop an extension for an existing IDE. Eclipse, NetBeans, Komodo, etc. are all nicely extensible through plugins.
I've wondered this a bunch of times. The answer that comes to mind is: there's no point since VS is so feature rich, but on the flip side, this the fact that something has already been done hasn't stopped people in the past.
There was a C# plug-in for Eclipse a long time ago, but it wasn't really production quality by a long shot. I haven't seen anything else coming into the Eclipse ecosystem to support .NET.
Emonic is a more recent plugin for C# on Eclipse. It's meant to work with either Mono or MS.NET.
While not a whole C# environment, it's probably worth mentioning the Silverlight tools for Eclipse:
http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/eclipse-tools-for-silverlight-now-available/