| Java IDEs make nice: Eclipse joins JCP |
Jan. 11, 2007
Maybe cats and dogs can live together, after all. Sources close to the matter revealed today that the Eclipse Foundation has joined the Java Community Process (JCP). A quick check of the JCP membership list reveals that the Foundation is listed as a member.
The sources also said that Eclipse joined the JCP this week, and that the formal announcement is scheduled for next week.
Historically, the two development groups have not worked or played well with each other. Both, however, have had a common goal: an open-source, inexpensive Java IDE (integrated development environment) that can be used on multiple platforms to produce programs for various computer architectures.
As Marc Erickson, then communications manager for the Eclipse Java IDE project, said in early 2003, "Developers need and want tools that can deal with an increasing complex computing world while letting them work with a single toolkit."
Proponents of a unified, open-source Java IDE also believe that such an IDE would boost Java's fortunes by making development easier and more competitive with Microsoft's popular Visual Studio IDE. As is so often the case, however, two key companies -- Sun Microsystems and IBM -- took two different, and incompatible, roads to creating a Java IDE. Sun, and the JCP, supported NetBeans, while IBM led many other companies to Eclipse.
NetBeans started when Roman Stanek undertook an undergraduate student project to create an open-source Java IDE. He subsequently created a company, called NetBeans, to sell the technology. Sun acquired the business in 1999.
In mid-2000, Sun made NetBeans open source, because the company was making open source a strategic development approach and hoped it would further popularize Java. Today, Sun and its JCP partners take advantage of NetBeans as an IDE framework that offers a common set of APIs to connect code editors, compilers, debuggers, and other NetBeans-compatible tools. Although designed to work best with Java, NetBeans can also work with APIs that hook into other languages, such as C++ and XML
IBM, meanwhile, started Eclipse as an internal initiative, for use with the company's Smalltalk programming language, to integrate its many development programs, explained IBM Distinguished Engineer David Thomson.
IBM subsequently released it as open-source software under the supervision of the Eclipse.org industry consortium. About 30 companies, including Borland Software and HP, and the Object Management Group, a consortium that produces and maintains specifications for interoperable enterprise applications, are Eclipse members. However, any company can build development applications using the technology.
Though Eclipse itself is built with Java, which enables it to run on multiple platforms, Eclipse isn't a Java-specific IDE. According to Thomson, Eclipse's APIs were built to be language-extensible from the start. Although Eclipse is language neutral, Erickson said, it works well with Java. Eclipse is designed much like NetBeans, with a set of APIs that connect code editors, analyzers, debuggers, and other development modules or plug-ins to form a seamless unit that works with a single set of behaviors and interfaces.
The technical differences, however, are only a small part of the NetBeans (Sun and JCP) versus Eclipse (IBM and the Eclipse Foundation) story. Since 2002, the groups have been fighting with each other. For example, at one time Sun accused Eclipse of attempting to fork Java, while IBM and friends have claimed that Eclipse is far superior to NetBeans.
In recent years, the Eclipse platform has gained far more developer support than JCP and Sun's NetBeans. That has lead to considerable tension in the Java programming world as Sun continued to go forward with NetBeans, while many other Java programmers moved to Eclipse.
Despite all the fighting between the two sides, both have long realized that a constant war of wars between the two open-source IDEs would not benefit either side in the long run. For instance, in 2004, Simon Phipps, then Sun's chief technology evangelist and now its chief open-source officer, told Eclipse developers that Sun would be interested in joining the Eclipse Foundation if certain "business conditions" were met.
Now, in the aftermath of Sun open-sourcing the Java language itself, it appears that some kind of rapprochement between the two major open-source Java IDEs is also in the offing.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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