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Technology
Eclipse and its Plugins
Eclipse is an open source, java based extensible development platform. It is a framework and a set of services that construct development environment by plugins. Fortunately, Eclipse has a standard plugin set, including JDT (Java Development Tools).
Plugin is a computer application which communicates with host application to provide special function. The main reasons that applications support plugins are for the 3rd party extension. The host application provides plugin usable services, and let the plugin and the data communication protocol registered. Plugins rely on the services provided by host applications; they cannot run independently. On the other hand, host applications are separated with plugins. We can dynamically add or update plugins without modifying host applications. Open API provides a standard interface which allows communication between 3rd party plugins and host applications. The 3rd party plugin should be able to run even after the host application updated. Plugins prolong the life of applications that are out of date. Plugin is slightly different from extension. Plugin generally relies on the host application API and has a certain bound for running. Extension has less limitation and can provide its own interface. They both can reduce the size of the host application and provide a set of optional functions.
Eclipse was the next generation of IDE initially developed by IBM to substitute Visual Age for Java. It was donated to the open source community in November, 2001, and now it is managed by Eclipse Foundation. In 2003, Eclipse 3.0 took OSGi service platform criterion as runtime framework. In June 2007, version 3.3 was released. In June 2008, version 3.4 was released with a code name of Ganymede.
Eclipse is a famous cross-platform IDE. Initially, it was used for Java development. Now, it could be used as a development tool for other languages like C++, Python by plugins. Eclipse itself is just a framework platform, however, thousands of plugin support makes it flexible which other IDE software hardly could be. Many software developers developed its own IDE based on Eclipse framework.
Eclipse was initially established by the IDE product development group of OTI and IBM in April, 1999. IBM provided initial Eclipse base code, including Platform, JDT and PDE. Now, leaded by IBM, the Eclipse project has developed to a huge Eclipse alliance. More than 150 software companies have taken part in the Eclipse project, such as Borland, Rational Software, Red Hat, Sybase etc. Eclipse is an open source project. It is used to substitute Visual Age for Java; the interface is almost the same. Because of its open source, everyone can get it for free, and then develop their own plugins, it is gathering more and more attention. Recently, many big companies including Oracle participated in this project and believed that Eclipse would be an IDE which could develop with any languages by just downloading the relevant plugins.
Although most users would like to use Eclipse as a Java IDE, the aim of Eclipse is far beyond it. Eclipse has a PDE (Plugin Development Environment). This framework aims at the software developers who would like to extend Eclipse because it allows them to construct integration tools with Eclipse environment. Because everything in Eclipse is a plugin, no matter providing plugins for Eclipse or providing unified IDE for users, every tool developer has a coequal room to exert.
This equality and coherence are not limited to Java development tools. Although Eclipse is developed in Java, its usage is not limited to Java. For instance, the plugins which support languages such as C/C++, COBOL, and Eiffel had been released, or due to released. Eclipse framework can also be considered as a base of developing application types other than software development, such as content management system.
A typical example for applications based on Eclipse is IBM WebSphere Studio Workbench which constitutes a set of IBM Java development tools. For example, WebSphere Studio Application Developer added support to JSP, servlet, EJB, XML, Web service and database access.
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