Eclipse (software) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment

Integrated development environment

An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...

(IDE) and an extensible plug-in system. It is written mostly in Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

and can be used to develop applications in Java and, by means of various plug-ins, other programming language

Programming language

A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....

s including Ada

Ada (programming language)

Ada is a structured, statically typed, imperative, wide-spectrum, and object-oriented high-level computer programming language, extended from Pascal and other languages...

, C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

, C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

, COBOL

COBOL

COBOL is one of the oldest programming languages. Its name is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments....

, Perl

Perl

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...

, PHP

PHP

PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...

, Python

Python (programming language)

Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...

, R

R (programming language)

R is a programming language and software environment for statistical computing and graphics. The R language is widely used among statisticians for developing statistical software, and R is widely used for statistical software development and data analysis....

, Ruby

Ruby (programming language)

Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto...

(including Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails, often shortened to Rails or RoR, is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language.-History:...

framework), Scala, Clojure

Clojure

Clojure |closure]]") is a recent dialect of the Lisp programming language created by Rich Hickey. It is a general-purpose language supporting interactive development that encourages a functional programming style, and simplifies multithreaded programming....

, Groovy and Scheme. It can also be used to develop packages for the software Mathematica

Mathematica

Mathematica is a computational software program used in scientific, engineering, and mathematical fields and other areas of technical computing...

. The IDE is often called Eclipse ADT (Ada Development Toolkit) for Ada, Eclipse CDT for C/C++, Eclipse JDT for Java, and Eclipse PDT for PHP.

The initial codebase

Codebase

The term codebase, or code base, is used in software development to mean the whole collection of source code used to build a particular application or component. Typically, the codebase includes only human-written source code files, and not, e.g., source code files generated by other tools or...

originated from VisualAge

VisualAge

VisualAge was the name of a family of computer integrated development environments from IBM, which included support for multiple programming languages. VisualAge was first released in the 1980s and is still available in 2011...

. In its default form it is meant for Java developers, consisting of the Java Development Tools (JDT). Users can extend its abilities by installing plug-ins written for the Eclipse software framework, such as development toolkits for other programming languages, and can write and contribute their own plug-in modules.

Released under the terms of the Eclipse Public License

Eclipse Public License

The Eclipse Public License is an open source software license used by the Eclipse Foundation for its software. It replaces the Common Public License and removes certain terms relating to litigations related to patents....

, Eclipse is free and open source software

Free and open source software

Free and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...

. It was one of the first IDEs to run under GNU Classpath

GNU Classpath

GNU Classpath is a project aiming to create a free software implementation of the standard class library for the Java programming language. Despite the massive size of the library to be created, the majority of the task is already done, including Swing, CORBA, and other major parts. The Classpath...

and it runs without issues under IcedTea

IcedTea

IcedTea is a build and integration project for OpenJDK launched by Red Hat in June 2007. The initial goal was to make the Java OpenJDK software which Sun Microsystems released as free software in 2007 usable without requiring any other software that is not free software and hence make it possible...

History

Eclipse began as an IBM Canada project. It was developed by Object Technology International

Object Technology International

Object Technology International was founded in Ottawa, Ontario in 1988 and acquired by IBM in 1996. OTI was the company behind the VisualAge line Smalltalk and Java development tools that eventually culminated in the open source Eclipse tool platform and integrated development environment .OTI...

(OTI) as a Java-based replacement for the Smalltalk

Smalltalk

Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist...

based VisualAge

VisualAge

family of IDE products, which itself had been developed by OTI. In November 2001, a consortium was formed to further the development of Eclipse as open source. In January 2004, the Eclipse Foundation

Eclipse Foundation

The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit, member supported corporation that hosts the open-source Eclipse Projects and helps cultivate both an open source community and an ecosystem of complementary products and services...

was created.

Eclipse 3.0 (released on 21 June 2004) selected the OSGi

OSGi

The Open Services Gateway initiative framework is a module system and service platform for the Java programming language that implements a complete and dynamic component model, something that does not exist in standalone Java/VM environments...

Service Platform specifications as the runtime architecture.

Eclipse was originally released under the Common Public License

Common Public License

In computing, the 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....

, but was later relicensed under the Eclipse Public License

Eclipse Public License

. The Free Software Foundation

Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...

has said that both licenses are free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

licenses, but are incompatible with the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

(GPL). Mike Milinkovich, of the Eclipse Foundation commented that moving to the GPL would be considered when version 3 of the GPL was released.

According to Lee Nackman, Chief Technology Officer of IBM's Rational division at that time, the name "Eclipse" was not a pun on Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

, as their primary competition at the time was Microsoft Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment from Microsoft. It is used to develop console and graphical user interface applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all...

Releases

Since 2006, the Foundation has coordinated an annual Simultaneous Release. Each release includes the Eclipse Platform as well as a number of other Eclipse projects.

So far, each Simultaneous Release has occurred at the end of June.

Release	Date	Platform version	Projects
Juno	27 June 2012	4.2	Juno projects
Indigo	22 June 2011	3.7	Indigo projects
Helios	23 June 2010	3.6	Helios projects
Galileo	24 June 2009	3.5	Galileo projects
Ganymede	25 June 2008	3.4	Ganymede projects
Europa	29 June 2007	3.3	Europa projects
Callisto	30 June 2006	3.2	Callisto projects
Eclipse 3.1	28 June 2005	3.1
Eclipse 3.0	21 June 2004	3.0 http://www.eclipse.org/org/press-release/jun212004r30pr.html

Architecture

Eclipse uses plug-ins to provide all functionality within and on top of the runtime system, in contrast to some other applications, in which functionality is hard code

Hard code

Hard coding refers to the software development practice of embedding what may, perhaps only in retrospect, be regarded as input or configuration data directly into the source code of a program or other executable object, or fixed formatting of the data, instead of obtaining that data from external...

d. The runtime system of Eclipse is based on Equinox, an implementation of the OSGi

OSGi

core framework specification.

This plug-in mechanism is a lightweight software componentry framework. In addition to allowing Eclipse to be extended using other programming language

Programming language

s such as C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

and Python

Python (programming language)

, the plug-in framework allows Eclipse to work with typesetting languages like LaTeX

LaTeX

LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...

, networking applications such as telnet

TELNET

Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...

and database management system

Database management system

A database management system is a software package with computer programs that control the creation, maintenance, and use of a database. It allows organizations to conveniently develop databases for various applications by database administrators and other specialists. A database is an integrated...

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

Configuration management

Configuration management is a field of management that focuses on establishing and maintaining consistency of a system or product's performance and its functional and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life.For information assurance, CM...

. Java and CVS

Concurrent Versions System

The Concurrent Versions System , also known as the Concurrent Versioning System, is a client-server free software revision control system in the field of software development. Version control system software keeps track of all work and all changes in a set of files, and allows several developers ...

support is provided in the Eclipse SDK

Software development kit

A software development kit is typically a set of software development tools that allows for the creation of applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar platform.It may be something as simple...

, with support for other version control systems provided by third-party plug-ins.

With the exception of a small run-time kernel, everything in Eclipse is a plug-in. This means that every plug-in developed integrates with Eclipse in exactly 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 through third parties using both free and commercial models. Examples of plug-ins include a UML

Unified Modeling Language

Unified Modeling Language is a standardized general-purpose modeling language in the field of object-oriented software engineering. The standard is managed, and was created, by the Object Management Group...

plug-in for Sequence and other UML diagrams, a plug-in for DB Explorer, and many others.

The Eclipse SDK includes the Eclipse Java Development Tools (JDT), offering an IDE with a built-in incremental

Incremental compiler

The term incremental compiler may refer to two different types of compiler.-Imperative programming:In imperative programming and software development, an incremental compiler is one that when invoked, takes only the changes of a known set of source files and updates any corresponding output files ...

Java 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

The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...

over a flat filespace allowing external file modifications as long as the corresponding workspace "resource" is refreshed afterwards.

Eclipse implements widgets through a widget toolkit for Java called SWT

Standard Widget Toolkit

The Standard Widget Toolkit is a graphical widget toolkit for use with the Java platform. It was originally developed by IBM and is now maintained by the Eclipse Foundation in tandem with the Eclipse IDE...

, unlike most Java applications, which use the Java standard Abstract Window Toolkit

Abstract Window Toolkit

The Abstract Window Toolkit is Java's original platform-independent windowing, graphics, and user-interface widget toolkit. The AWT is now part of the Java Foundation Classes — the standard API for providing a graphical user interface for a Java program.AWT is also the GUI toolkit for a...

(AWT) or Swing

Swing (Java)

Swing is the primary Java GUI widget toolkit. It is part of Oracle's Java Foundation Classes — an API for providing a graphical user interface for Java programs....

. Eclipse's user interface also uses an intermediate GUI

Gui

Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...

layer called JFace

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." It is a layer that sits on top of the raw widget system, and provides classes for handling common UI programming tasks...

, which simplifies the construction of applications based on SWT.

Language packs provide translations into over a dozen natural language

Natural language

In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...

Rich Client Platform

Eclipse provides the Eclipse Rich Client Platform

Rich Client Platform

A rich client platform is software consisting of the following components:* A core , lifecycle manager* A standard bundling framework* A portable widget toolkit* File buffers, text handling, text editors...

(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
Standard Widget Toolkit
The Standard Widget Toolkit is a graphical widget toolkit for use with the Java platform. It was originally developed by IBM and is now maintained by the Eclipse Foundation in tandem with the Eclipse IDE...

(SWT) – a portable widget toolkit
Widget toolkit
In computing, a widget toolkit, widget library, or GUI toolkit is a set of widgets for use in designing applications with graphical user interfaces...
JFace
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." It is a layer that sits on top of the raw widget system, and provides classes for handling common UI programming tasks...

– viewer classes to bring model view controller programming to SWT, file buffers, text handling, text editors
Eclipse Workbench – views, editors, perspectives, wizards

Server platform

Eclipse supports development for Tomcat

Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat is an open source web server and servlet container developed by the Apache Software Foundation...

, GlassFish

GlassFish

GlassFish is an open source application server project started by Sun Microsystems for the Java EE platform and now sponsored by Oracle Corporation. The supported version is called Oracle GlassFish Server...

and many other servers and is often capable of installing the required server (for development) directly from the IDE. It supports remote debugging, allowing the 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. They are all 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

Model Transformation projects uses EMF

Eclipse Modeling Framework

Eclipse Modeling Framework is an Eclipse-based modeling framework and code generation facility for building tools and other applications based on a structured data model...

based models as an input and produce either a model or text as an output. Model to model transformation projects includes ATL

ATLAS Transformation Language

ATL is a model transformation language and toolkit developed and maintained by OBEO and AtlanMod. It was initiated by the team...

, an open source transformation language and toolkit used to transform a given model or to generate a new model from a given EMF

Eclipse Modeling Framework

Eclipse Modeling Framework is an Eclipse-based modeling framework and code generation facility for building tools and other applications based on a structured data model...

model. Model to text transformation projects contains Acceleo

Acceleo

Acceleo is an open source code generator of the Eclipse Foundation that allow people to use a model driven approach to build application from models. It is an implementation of the standard from the Object Management Group for model to text transformation named MOFM2T.- Early versions :The project...

, an implementation of MOFM2T, a standard model to text language from the OMG

Object Management Group

Object Management Group is a consortium, originally aimed at setting standards for distributed object-oriented systems, and is now focused on modeling and model-based standards.- Overview :...

. Acceleo

Acceleo

is an open source code generator that can generate any textual language (Java, PHP, Python, etc.) from EMF

Eclipse Modeling Framework

Eclipse Modeling Framework is an Eclipse-based modeling framework and code generation facility for building tools and other applications based on a structured data model...

based models defined with any metamodel (UML

Unified Modeling Language

, SysML

Systems Modeling Language

The Systems Modeling Language is a general-purpose modeling language for systems engineering applications. It supports the specification, analysis, design, verification and validation of a broad range of systems and systems-of-systems. SysML was originally developed by an open source specification...

, etc.).

Model Development Tools

Model Development Tools projects are implementations of modeling standard used in the industry like UML

Unified Modeling Language

or OCL

Object Constraint Language

The Object Constraint Language is a declarative language for describing rules that apply to Unified Modeling Language models developed at IBM and now part of the UML standard. Initially, OCL was only a formal specification language extension to UML. OCL may now be used with any Meta-Object...

and their toolkit. Among those projects can be found implementation of the following standard:

UML
Unified Modeling Language
Unified Modeling Language is a standardized general-purpose modeling language in the field of object-oriented software engineering. The standard is managed, and was created, by the Object Management Group...
OCL
Object Constraint Language
The Object Constraint Language is a declarative language for describing rules that apply to Unified Modeling Language models developed at IBM and now part of the UML standard. Initially, OCL was only a formal specification language extension to UML. OCL may now be used with any Meta-Object...
BPMN
IMM
SBVR
XSD
NEDA

Concrete Syntax Development

The Concrete Syntax Development project contains the Graphical Modeling Framework, an Eclipse based framework dedicated to the graphical representation of EMF

Eclipse Modeling Framework

Eclipse Modeling Framework is an Eclipse-based modeling framework and code generation facility for building tools and other applications based on a structured data model...

based models.

Abstract Syntax Development

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

Eclipse Modeling Framework

Eclipse Modeling Framework is an Eclipse-based modeling framework and code generation facility for building tools and other applications based on a structured data model...

like CDO

Connected Data Objects

CDO is a free implementation of a Distributed Shared Model on top of the Eclipse Modeling Framework .With CDO, programmers can easily enhance existing EMF models in such a way that they can be stored and subsequently maintained in a central model repository...

, EMF query or EMF validation.

Technology and Research

Technology and Research projects are prototypes of Modeling project, this project is used to host all the modeling project of the Eclipse Foundation during their incubation phase.

Amalgam

Amalgam provides the packaging and integration between all the available modeling tools for the Eclipse package dedicated to modeling tools.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Releases

Architecture

Rich Client Platform

Server platform

Web Tools Platform

Modeling Platform

Model Transformation

Model Development Tools

Concrete Syntax Development

Abstract Syntax Development

Technology and Research

Amalgam

See also

Further reading

External links