Eclipse is an

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools ...

(IDE) used in

computer programming Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as anal ...

. It contains a base workspace and an extensible plug-in system for customizing the environment. It is the second-most-popular IDE for

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

development, and, until 2016, was the most popular. Eclipse is written mostly in Java and its primary use is for developing Java applications, but it may also be used to develop applications in other

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

s via plug-ins, including

Ada Ada may refer to: Places Africa * Ada Foah, a town in Ghana * Ada (Ghana parliament constituency) * Ada, Osun, a town in Nigeria Asia * Ada, Urmia, a village in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran * Ada, Karaman, a village in Karaman Province, T ...

, ABAP, C,

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

, C#,

Clojure Clojure (, like ''closure'') is a dynamic and functional dialect of the Lisp programming language on the Java platform. Like other Lisp dialects, Clojure treats code as data and has a Lisp macro system. The current development process is comm ...

COBOL COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily u ...

, D, Erlang, Fortran, Groovy, Haskell,

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

, Julia, Lasso, Lua,

NATURAL Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans ar ...

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...

, PHP,

Prolog Prolog is a logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics. Prolog has its roots in first-order logic, a formal logic, and unlike many other programming languages, Prolog is intended primarily ...

, Python, R,

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called ...

(including

Ruby on Rails Ruby on Rails (simplified as Rails) is a server-side web application framework written in Ruby under the MIT License. Rails is a model–view–controller (MVC) framework, providing default structures for a database, a web service, and we ...

framework),

Rust Rust is an iron oxide, a usually reddish-brown oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water or air moisture. Rust consists of hydrous iron(III) oxides (Fe2O3·nH2O) and iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (FeO( ...

, Scala, and

Scheme A scheme is a systematic plan for the implementation of a certain idea. Scheme or schemer may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''The Scheme'' (TV series), a BBC Scotland documentary series * The Scheme (band), an English pop band * ''The Schem ...

. It can also be used to develop documents with

LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...

(via a TeXlipse plug-in) and packages for the software

Mathematica Wolfram Mathematica is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allow machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network analysis, time series analysis, NLP, optimiza ...

. Development environments include the Eclipse Java development tools (JDT) for Java and Scala, Eclipse CDT for C/C++, and Eclipse PDT for PHP, among others. The initial

codebase In software development, a codebase (or code base) is a collection of source code used to build a particular software system, application, or software component. Typically, a codebase includes only human-written source code files; thus, a codeb ...

originated from

IBM VisualAge VisualAge is a family of computer integrated development environments from IBM, which supports multiple programming languages. VisualAge was first released in October 1993 and was discontinued April 30, 2007 and its web page removed in Septembe ...

. The Eclipse

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific ...

(SDK), which includes the Java development tools, is meant for Java developers. Users can extend its abilities by installing plug-ins written for the Eclipse Platform, such as development toolkits for other programming languages, and can write and contribute their own plug-in modules. Since the introduction of the

OSGi OSGi is an open specification and open source project under the Eclipse Foundation. It is a continuation of the work done by the OSGi Alliance (formerly known as the Open Services Gateway initiative), which was an open standards organization fo ...

implementation (

Equinox A solar equinox is a moment in time when the Sun crosses the Earth's equator, which is to say, appears directly above the equator, rather than north or south of the equator. On the day of the equinox, the Sun appears to rise "due east" and se ...

) in version 3 of Eclipse, plug-ins can be plugged-stopped dynamically and are termed (OSGI) bundles. Eclipse

(SDK) is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

, released under the terms of the

Eclipse Public License The Eclipse Public License (EPL) is a free and open source software license most notably used for the Eclipse IDE and other projects by the Eclipse Foundation. It replaces the Common Public License (CPL) and removes certain terms relating to li ...

, although it is incompatible with the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

. It was one of the first IDEs to run under GNU Classpath and it runs without problems under IcedTea.

History

Eclipse was inspired by the

Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed reflective programming language. It was designed and created in part for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by Alan ...

-based VisualAge family of

(IDE) products. Although fairly successful, a major drawback of the VisualAge products was that developed code was not in a

component-based software engineering Component-based software engineering (CBSE), also called component-based development (CBD), is a branch of software engineering that emphasizes the separation of concerns with respect to the wide-ranging functionality available throughout a giv ...

model. Instead, all code for a project was held in a compressed database using SCID techniques (somewhat like a zip file but in a proprietary format called .dat). Individual classes could not be easily accessed, certainly not outside the tool. A team primarily at the IBM Cary, NC lab developed the new product as a Java-based replacement. In November 2001, a consortium was formed with a board of stewards to further the development of Eclipse as

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. ...

. It is estimated that IBM had already invested nearly $40 million by that time. The original members were

Borland Borland Software Corporation was a computer technology company founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad and Philippe Kahn. Its main business was the development and sale of software development and software deployment product ...

, IBM, Merant,

QNX Software Systems QNX ( or ) is a commercial Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. QNX was one of the first commercially successful microkernel operating systems. The product was originally developed in the earl ...

Rational Software Rational Machines is an enterprise founded by Paul Levy and Mike Devlin in 1981 to provide tools to expand the use of modern software engineering practices, particularly explicit modular architecture and iterative development Iterative and in ...

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become a ...

SuSE SUSE ( , ) is a German-based multinational open-source software company that develops and sells Linux products to business customers. Founded in 1992, it was the first company to market Linux for enterprise. It is the developer of SUSE Linux Ent ...

, TogetherSoft, and

WebGain WebGain was a jointly funded venture between Warburg Pincus and BEA Systems. The objective of the company was to acquire existing Java EE /Java programming language development tools and roll them together into a single application development e ...

. The number of stewards increased to over 80 by the end of 2003. In January 2004, the

Eclipse Foundation The Eclipse Foundation AISBL is an independent, Europe-based not-for-profit corporation that acts as a steward of the Eclipse open source software development community, with legal jurisdiction in the European Union. It is an organization suppo ...

was created. Eclipse 3.0 (released on 21 June 2004) selected the

Service Platform specifications as the runtime architecture. The

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

recognized Eclipse with the 2011

ACM Software Systems Award The ACM Software System Award is an annual award that honors people or an organization "for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, reflected in contributions to concepts, in commercial acceptance, or both". It is awarded b ...

on 26 April 2012.

Licensing

The

(EPL) is the fundamental license under which Eclipse projects are released. Some projects require dual licensing, for which the Eclipse Distribution License (EDL) is available, although use of this license must be applied for and is considered on a case-by-case basis. Eclipse was originally released under the

Common Public License In computing, the Common Public License (CPL) is a free software / open-source software license published by IBM. The Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative have approved the license terms of the CPL. Definition The CPL has the stat ...

, but was later re-licensed under the Eclipse Public License. The

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ( ...

has said that both licenses are

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, n ...

licenses, but are incompatible with the

(GPL).

Name

According to Lee Nackman, Chief Technology Officer of IBM's Rational division (originating in 2003) at that time, the name "Eclipse" (dating from at least 2001) was not a wordplay on

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, t ...

, as the product's primary competition at the time of naming was

Microsoft Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such ...

, which ''Eclipse'' was to eclipse. Different versions of Eclipse have been given different science-related names. The versions named after Callisto,

Europa Europa may refer to: Places * Europe * Europa (Roman province), a province within the Diocese of Thrace * Europa (Seville Metro), Seville, Spain; a station on the Seville Metro * Europa City, Paris, France; a planned development * Europa Clif ...

, and Ganymede, which are moons of

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousand ...

, were followed by a version named after

Galileo Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...

, the discoverer of those moons. These were followed by two sun-themed names,

Helios In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Helios (; grc, , , Sun; Homeric Greek: ) is the god and personification of the Sun (Solar deity). His name is also Latinized as Helius, and he is often given the epithets Hyperion ("the one above") an ...

of Greek mythology, and

Indigo Indigo is a deep color close to the color wheel blue (a primary color in the RGB color space), as well as to some variants of ultramarine, based on the ancient dye of the same name. The word "indigo" comes from the Latin word ''indicum'', ...

, one of the seven colors of a rainbow (which is produced by the sun). The version after that, Juno, has a triple meaning: a Roman mythological figure, an

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

, and a spacecraft to Jupiter.

Kepler Johannes Kepler (; ; 27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws o ...

, Luna, and

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin at ...

continued the astronomy theme, and then

Neon Neon is a chemical element with the symbol Ne and atomic number 10. It is a noble gas. Neon is a colorless, odorless, inert monatomic gas under standard conditions, with about two-thirds the density of air. It was discovered (along with krypt ...

and

Oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements ...

constituted a theme of

chemical elements A chemical element is a species of atoms that have a given number of protons in their nuclei, including the pure substance consisting only of that species. Unlike chemical compounds, chemical elements cannot be broken down into simpler su ...

Photon A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless, so they alwa ...

represented a return to sun-themed names. , the alphabetic scheme was abandoned in order to better align with the new Simultaneous Release strategy. Releases are named in the format YYYY-MM to reflect the quarterly releases, starting with version 4.9 named 2018-09.

Releases

Since 2006, the Foundation has coordinated an annual ''Simultaneous Release''. Each release includes the Eclipse Platform and several other Eclipse projects. From 2008 through 2018, each Simultaneous Release had occurred on the 4th Wednesday of June. In 2018 the project switched to quarterly (13 week) YYYY-MM releases without intermediate service releases.

Architecture

Eclipse uses plug-ins to provide all the functionality within and on top of the run-time system. Its run-time system is based on

, an implementation of the

core framework specification. In addition to allowing the Eclipse Platform to be extended using other

s, such as C and Python, the plug-in framework allows the Eclipse Platform to work with typesetting languages like

and networking applications such as

telnet Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet control i ...

and

database management system In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases ...

s. The plug-in architecture supports writing any desired extension to the environment, such as for

configuration management Configuration management (CM) is a process for establishing and maintaining consistency of a product's performance, functional, and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life. The CM proc ...

. Java and CVS support is provided in the Eclipse SDK, with support for other

version control system In software engineering, version control (also known as revision control, source control, or source code management) is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections ...

s provided by third-party plug-ins. With the exception of a small run-time kernel, everything in Eclipse is a plug-in. Thus, every plug-in developed integrates with Eclipse in the same way as other plug-ins; in this respect, all features are "created equal". Eclipse provides plug-ins for a wide variety of features, some of which are from third parties using both free and commercial models. Examples of plug-ins include for

Unified Modeling Language The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose, developmental modeling language in the field of software engineering that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system. The creation of UML was originally m ...

(UML), for Sequence and other UML diagrams, a plug-in for DB Explorer, and many more. The Eclipse SDK includes the Eclipse Java development tools (JDT), offering an IDE with a built-in Java incremental compiler and a full model of the Java source files. This allows for advanced refactoring techniques and code analysis. The IDE also makes use of a ''workspace'', in this case a set of

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

over a flat filespace allowing external file modifications as long as the corresponding workspace ''resource'' is refreshed afterward. Eclipse implements the

graphical control element A graphical widget (also graphical control element or control) in a graphical user interface is an element of interaction, such as a button or a scroll bar. Controls are software components that a computer user interacts with through dir ...

s of the Java toolkit called Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT), whereas most Java applications use the Java standard Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) or

Swing Swing or swinging may refer to: Apparatus * Swing (seat), a hanging seat that swings back and forth * Pendulum, an object that swings * Russian swing, a swing-like circus apparatus * Sex swing, a type of harness for sexual intercourse * Swing ri ...

. Eclipse's

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

also uses an intermediate

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...

layer called

JFace JFace is defined by the Eclipse project as "a UI toolkit that provides helper classes for developing UI features that can be tedious to implement." The Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) is an open source widget toolkit for Java designed to provide ...

, which simplifies the construction of applications based on SWT. Eclipse was made to run on Wayland during a

Google Summer of Code The Google Summer of Code, often abbreviated to GSoC, is an international annual program in which Google awards stipends to contributors who successfully complete a free and open-source software coding project during the summer. , the program is ...

(GSoC) Project in 2014. , language packs being developed by the ''Babel Project'' provide translations into over 40

natural language In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languages ...

Rich client platform

Eclipse provides the

rich client platform The rich client platform (RCP) is a programmer tool that makes it easier to integrate independent software components, where most of the data processing occurs on the client side. Overview RCP is a software consisting of the following components: ...

(RCP) for developing general-purpose applications. The following components constitute the rich client platform: * Equinox OSGi – a standard bundling framework * Core platform – boot Eclipse, run plug-ins * Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) – a portable

widget toolkit A widget toolkit, widget library, GUI toolkit, or UX library is a library or a collection of libraries containing a set of graphical control elements (called ''widgets'') used to construct the graphical user interface (GUI) of programs. Most widge ...

– viewer classes to bring

model view controller A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure. Models c ...

programming to SWT, file buffers, text handling, text editors * Eclipse Workbench – views, editors, perspectives, wizards Examples of rich client applications based on Eclipse are: *

IBM Notes HCL Notes (formerly IBM Notes and Lotus Notes; see Branding below) and HCL Domino (formerly IBM Domino and Lotus Domino) are the client and server, respectively, of a collaborative client-server software platform formerly sold by IBM, now by HC ...

8 and 9 * Attachmate-Novell

NetIQ NetIQ is a product line within the CyberRes line of business at Micro Focus, which includes solutions focused on cybersecurity, including ArcSight, Fortify, Voltage, and NetIQ. NetIQ was previously based in Houston, Texas, with products that pr ...

Designer for Identity Manager *

Apache Directory Apache Directory is an open source project of the Apache Software Foundation. The Apache Directory Server, originally written by Alex Karasulu, is an embeddable directory server entirely written in Java. It was certified LDAPv3-compatible by T ...

Studio *

Remote Component Environment The remote component environment (RCE) is an integration environment for scientists and engineers to analyze, design, and simulate complex systems (e.g., aircraft, satellites, and space vehicle). It focusses on the collaboration in multidiscipl ...

DBeaver DBeaver is a SQL client software application and a database administration tool. For relational databases it uses the JDBC application programming interface (API) to interact with databases via a JDBC driver. For other databases (NoSQL) it use ...

, a SQL client software * Portfolio Performance * UDig, a GIS software *

AnyLogic AnyLogic is a multimethod simulation modeling tool developed by The AnyLogic Company (former XJ Technologies). It supports agent-based, discrete event, and system dynamics simulation methodologies.Christopher W. Weimer, J. O. Miller, Raymond ...

, a multimethod simulation modeling tool

Server platform

Eclipse supports development for Tomcat,

GlassFish GlassFish is an open-source Jakarta EE platform application server project started by Sun Microsystems, then sponsored by Oracle Corporation, and now living at the Eclipse Foundation and supported by Payara, Oracle and Red Hat. The supported v ...

and many other servers and is often capable of installing the required server (for development) directly from the IDE. It supports remote debugging, allowing a user to watch variables and step through the code of an application that is running on the attached server.

Web Tools Platform

The Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) project is an extension of the Eclipse platform with tools for developing Web and Java EE applications. It includes source and graphical editors for a variety of languages, wizards and built-in applications to simplify development, and tools and APIs to support deploying, running, and testing apps.

Modeling platform

The Modeling project contains all the official projects of the Eclipse Foundation focusing on model-based development technologies. All are compatible with the Eclipse Modeling Framework created by IBM. Those projects are separated in several categories: Model Transformation, Model Development Tools, Concrete Syntax Development, Abstract Syntax Development, Technology and Research, and Amalgam. Model Transformation projects uses

Eclipse Modeling Framework Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) is an Eclipse-based modeling framework and code generation facility for building tools and other applications based on a structured data model. From a model specification described in XML Metadata Interchange ...

(EMF) based models as an input and produce either a model or text as an output. Model to model transformation projects includes ATLAS Transformation Language (ATL), an open source transformation language and toolkit used to transform a given model or to generate a new model from a given EMF model. Model to text transformation projects contains Acceleo, an implementation of MOFM2T, a standard model to text language from the

Object Management Group The Object Management Group (OMG) is a computer industry standards consortium. OMG Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a range of technologies. Business activities The goal of the OMG was a common portable and interoperab ...

(OMG). The Acceleo code generator can generate any textual language (Java, PHP, Python, etc.) from EMF based models defined with any metamodel (

(UML), Systems Modeling Language (SysML), etc.). It is open-source. Model Development Tools projects are implementations of various modeling standards used in the industry, and their toolkits. Among those projects can be found implementations of several standards: *

(UML) * Systems Modeling Language (SysML) *

Object Constraint Language The Object Constraint Language (OCL) is a declarative language describing rules applying to Unified Modeling Language (UML) models developed at IBM and is now part of the UML standard. Initially, OCL was merely a formal specification language ex ...

(OCL) *

Business Process Model and Notation Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a graphical representation for specifying business processes in a business process model. Originally developed by the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI), BPMN has been maintained by the ...

(BPMN) * Interactive Media Manager (IMM) *

Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules The Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR) is an adopted standard of the Object Management Group (OMG) intended to be the basis for formal and detailed natural language declarative description of a complex entity, such as a bus ...

(SBVR) *

XML Schema An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself. These constra ...

(XSD) *

National Electronic Distributors Association The National Electronic Distributors Association (NEDA) was a trade association in the United States of manufacturers and distributors. The association cooperates in standardization of names for components, such as batteries. NEDA is often cite ...

(NEDA) The Concrete Syntax Development project contains the Graphical Modeling Framework, an Eclipse-based framework dedicated to the graphical representation of EMF based models. The Abstract Syntax Development project hosts the Eclipse Modeling Framework, core of most of the modeling project of the Eclipse Foundation and the framework available for EMF like Connected Data Objects (CDO), EMF query or EMF validation. Technology and Research projects are prototypes of Modeling project; this project is used to host all the modeling projects of the Eclipse Foundation during their incubation phase. Amalgam provides the packaging and integration between all the available modeling tools for the Eclipse package dedicated to modeling tools.

Application lifecycle management

Application lifecycle management Application lifecycle management (ALM) is the product lifecycle management (governance, development, and maintenance) of computer programs. It encompasses requirements management, software architecture, computer programming, software testing, ...

(ALM) and

task management Task management is the process of managing a task through its life cycle. It involves planning, testing, tracking, and reporting. Task management can help either individual achieve goals, or groups of individuals collaborate and share knowledg ...

in Eclipse need an optional component called Mylyn (), an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

implementation of the

task-focused interface The task-focused interface is a type of user interface which extends the desktop metaphor of the graphical user interface to make tasks, not files and folders, the primary unit of interaction. Instead of showing entire hierarchies of information, su ...

. It provides an API for tools embedding the task-focused interface. For software developers, it helps a developer work efficiently with many different tasks (such as bugs, problem reports or new features). Tasks are integrated into Mylyn. For all tasks that have been integrated, Mylyn monitors user activity and tries to identify information relevant to the task at hand. It uses this task context to focus the Eclipse UI on the related information. Mylyn can integrate with repositories such as

Bugzilla Bugzilla is a web-based general-purpose bug tracking system and testing tool originally developed and used by the Mozilla project, and licensed under the Mozilla Public License. Released as open-source software by Netscape Communications in 199 ...

Trac Trac is an open-source, web-based project management and bug tracking system. It has been adopted by a variety of organizations for use as a bug tracking system for both free and open-source software and proprietary projects and products. Tr ...

Redmine Redmine is a free and open source, web-based project management and issue tracking tool. It allows users to manage multiple projects and associated subprojects. It features per project wikis and forums, time tracking, and flexible, role-based acc ...

Mantis Mantises are an order (Mantodea) of insects that contains over 2,400 species in about 460 genera in 33 families. The largest family is the Mantidae ("mantids"). Mantises are distributed worldwide in temperate and tropical habitats. They ha ...

, JIRA, Unfuddle, and

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, cont ...

. It focuses on improving productivity by reducing searching, scrolling, and navigation. By making task context explicit, Mylyn is also meant to facilitate multitasking, planning, reusing past efforts, and sharing expertise. The project name comes from

myelin Myelin is a lipid-rich material that surrounds nerve cell axons (the nervous system's "wires") to insulate them and increase the rate at which electrical impulses (called action potentials) are passed along the axon. The myelinated axon can ...

, an electrically insulating layer that surrounds neurons' axons. The original name of this project, "Mylar", replicated a trademark of a

boPET BoPET (biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate) is a polyester film made from stretched polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and is used for its high tensile strength, chemical and dimensional stability, transparency, reflectivity, gas and ar ...

film company, so the

changed the project name.

Extensions

Eclipse supports a rich selection of extensions, adding support for Python via PyDev, Android development via Google's ADT (superseded by

Android Studio Android Studio is the official integrated development environment (IDE) for Google's Android operating system, built on JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA software and designed specifically for Android development. It is available for download on Win ...

since 2015), JavaFX via e(fx)clipse,

jQuery jQuery is a JavaScript library designed to simplify HTML DOM tree traversal and manipulation, as well as event handling, CSS animation, and Ajax. It is free, open-source software using the permissive MIT License. As of Aug 2022, jQuery is u ...

, and many others at the Eclipse Marketplace. Valable is a Vala plug-in for Eclipse.

Alternative distributions

Several alternative distributions exist in the Eclipse project.

PHP Development Tools

The PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) Development Tools project provides a framework for the Eclipse platform. The project encompasses all development components, including code-completion, develop PHP and facilitate extensibility. It leverages the existing Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) and Dynamic Languages Toolkit (DLTK).

Android Development Tools

Android Development Tools (ADT) was superseded in 2015 by the Eclipse foundation's own plugin, called Andmore: Development Tools for Android, after Google discontinued development of their plug-in for the Eclipse IDE, that is designed to provide an integrated environment in which to build Android applications. ADT/Andmore extends the abilities of Eclipse to let developers set up new Android projects, create an application UI, add packages based on the Android Framework API, debug their applications using the Android SDK tools, and export signed (or unsigned) .apk files in order to distribute their applications. It is freely available to download. Googles' ADT was the official IDE for Android until 2015 but was replaced by Eclipse's Andmore and the official

References

Sources

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External links

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Eclipse Foundation Press Releases
on eclipse.org
Eclipse Foundation 2006 Press Releases Archive
on eclipse.org

on eclipse.org {{DEFAULTSORT:Eclipse (Software) Android (operating system) development software Code navigation tools Cross-platform free software Debuggers Formerly proprietary software Free HTML editors Free integrated development environments Free software programmed in Java (programming language) Free UML tools IBM software Integrated development environments Java development tools Java platform Linux integrated development environments Linux programming tools Linux software MacOS programming tools MacOS text editors Programming tools for Windows Software development kits Software using the Eclipse license