Introduction The first (Web server extensions) version of Eclipse was released
Introduction The first version of Eclipse was released in November 2001. Eclipse was announced by IBM as a $40 million donation to the Open Source community. The first reactions to this gift, however, were mixed. While many Java programmers hailed the release of Eclipse enthusiastically (when would one not be enthusiastic about a $40 million present?), Sun Microsystems was initially less than amused. In the meantime, Eclipse has taken the Java world (and not only the Java world) by storm, despite the fact that Sun Microsystems is still not onboard. Eclipse is now completely managed by eclipse.org, an independent, nonprofit organization in which, however, IBM plays a major role. Despite the fact that the membership fee is quite hefty ($250.00 per year) and commitment is asked in the form of staff members working actively toward the development of Eclipse, the membership circle is not at all small: the Eclipse consortium has about 150 member companies, and people from Ericsson, Genuitec LLC, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Intel, MontaVista Software, QNX Software Systems Ltd., SAP AG, SAS, Serena Software, and the University of Washington belong to the board (Microsoft, you guessed it, is not a member). So, the question is, what is Eclipse? Is it a Java IDE? Is it a new GUI for Java applications? Is it an application platform or framework? Eclipse.org refers to Eclipse as a platform for everything and nothing in particular. That we can use Eclipse to develop Java programs (in fact, it is one of the finest Java IDEs) is just a special application of this platform. But its real application domain reaches far beyond Java development. Because of its plug-in architecture, Eclipse is as adaptable as a chameleon and can find a habitat in quite different environments. The Eclipse Java IDE is, in fact, only an eminent example of an Eclipse plug-in. A large number of other plug-ins have already been developed for Eclipse by various companies and developers or are currently in development (see Appendix A for a small selection of such developments). For example, there is a plug-in for a C++ IDE, while plug-ins for other programming languages such as RPG and COBOL are in preparation. In this book, however, we will concentrate on Java development with Eclipse. Eclipse is more than a pure development environment. With its SWT and JFace libraries it provides an alternative to Sun s Java libraries, AWT and Swing. SWT and JFace allow the creation of Java applications that closely match native applications (i.e., applications written in C or C++) in both look and feel and in responsiveness. In contrast, applications implemented on the basis of Swing often lack responsiveness and sometimes differ despite the possibility to switch skins from the look and feel of a native application. Such applications are notoriously hard to sell, because end users expect applications that fulfill the standards of the host platform. SWT and JFace could therefore be a breakthrough for Java applications on the desktop. No wonder, therefore, that there is a heated debate for and against SWT/JFace in the respective discussion forums (for example, www.javalobby.com) and that the SWT was voted as the most innovative Java component. Finally, Eclipse provides a large framework for implementing Java applications. Besides the GUI libraries SWT and JFace, we find higher-level components such as editors, viewers, resource management, task and problem management, a help system, and various assistants and wizards. Eclipse uses all these
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