Eclipse (computing)

From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.

Eclipse is an open source platform-independent framework for delivering rich-client applications. So far it has typically been used to develop IDEs (Integrated Development Environments), such as the highly-regarded Java IDE and compiler that come as part of Eclipse (and which are also used to develop Eclipse itself). However, it is apparent that it could be used for other types of client application as well.

Eclipse was originally developed by IBM, but is now developed by the Eclipse Foundation, an independent not-for-profit consortium of software industry vendors.

Eclipse employs plug-ins in order to provide all of its functionality, in contrast to some other IDEs where functionality is typically hard-coded. This plug-in mechanism is a lightweight software componentry framework and allows Eclipse to support other languages in addition to Java. Separate plug-ins have been created that add support for C/C++, telnet, and database development. The plug-in architecture supports writing any desired extension to the environment, such as for configuration management. It does not have to be used solely to support other programming languages.

Eclipse's widgets are based on IBM's third generation widget toolkit for Java called SWT which is a successor to Sun's first and second generation toolkits (AWT and Swing, respectively). Eclipse's user interface also depends on an intermediate GUI layer called JFace which simplifies the construction of applications based on SWT.

Eclipse 3.0 (2003) selected the OSGi Service Platform specifications as the runtime architecture.

External links

Official Eclipse website - Has mailing-lists, newgroups, plugins, and more.
Eclipse API
Eclipse plugin site - One of the most popular eclipse plugin directories.
EclipseWiki

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Eclipse (computing)

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External links