Lably
Skip to content

Eclipse (software)

Software development environment

  • 10 min read
  • 10 chapters

Related on Lably

Through Computer programming, Java (programming language) and COBOL

Lab · Class 9–11Arduino StudioLab · Class 9–11Arduino BasicsLab · Class 9–12ESP32 & BluetoothLabThe Pattern Parade

The initial codebase originated from IBM VisualAge. The Eclipse software development kit (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-ins. Since Eclipse 3.0 (released in 2004), plug-ins are installed and managed as "bundles" using Equinox, an implementation of OSGi.

The Eclipse SDK is free and open-source software, released under the terms of the Eclipse Public License, although it is incompatible with the GNU General Public License. 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-based VisualAge family of integrated development environment (IDE) products. Although fairly successful, a major drawback of the VisualAge products was that developed code was not in a component-based software engineering model. Instead, all code for a project was held in a compressed database using SCID techniques (somewhat like a zip file but in .dat). Individual classes could not be easily accessed, certainly not outside the tool. A team primarily at the IBM Cary, North Carolina, 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. It is estimated that IBM had already invested nearly $40 million by that time. The original members were Borland, IBM, Merant, QNX Software Systems, Rational Software, Red Hat, SuSE, TogetherSoft, and WebGain. The number of stewards increased to over 80 by the end of 2003. In January 2004, the Eclipse Foundation was created.

Eclipse 3.0 (released on 21 June 2004) selected the OSGi Service Platform specifications as the runtime architecture.

The Association for Computing Machinery recognized Eclipse with the 2011 ACM Software System Award on 26 April 2012.

Recent releases of the Eclipse IDE have introduced support for the latest programming language standards, such as Java 23 and C++23, as well as usability enhancements including a refreshed light theme, improved code folding for Java, and updated C/C++ tooling based on the Clang compiler frontend.

Licensing

The Eclipse Public License (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, but was later re-licensed under the Eclipse Public License. The Free Software Foundation has said that both licenses are free software licenses, but are incompatible with the GNU General Public License (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, as the product's primary competition at the time of naming was Microsoft Visual Studio, which Eclipse was to eclipse.

Different versions of Eclipse have been given different science-related names. The versions named after Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede, which are moons of Jupiter, were followed by a version named after Galileo, the discoverer of those moons. These were followed by two sun-themed names, Helios of Greek mythology, and Indigo, 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, and a spacecraft to Jupiter. Kepler, Luna, and Mars continued the astronomy theme, and then Neon and Oxygen constituted a theme of chemical elements. Photon represented a return to sun-themed names.

As of 2018, 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.

UnsupportedSupportedLatest versionFuture version

Sign in to keep reading

9 more chapters are free with a Lably account.

More in Computing and communication

ISBNUnique numeric book identifier since 1970X (social network)American social networking serviceWayback MachineDigital archive by the Internet ArchivePython (programming language)General-purpose programming languageMacOSOperating system for Apple computersUnicodeCharacter encoding standard