Eclipse (software)


Eclipse is an integrated development environment used in computer programming. It contains a base workspace and an extensible plug-in system for customizing the environment. It had been the most popular IDE for Java development until 2016, when it was surpassed by IntelliJ IDEA. Eclipse is written mostly in Java and its primary use is for developing Java applications, but it may also be used to develop applications in other programming languages via plug-ins, including Ada, ABAP, C, C++, C#, Clojure, COBOL, D, Erlang, Fortran, Groovy, Haskell, HLASM, JavaScript, Julia, Lasso, Lua, NATURAL, Perl, PHP, PL/I, Prolog, Python, R, Rexx, Ruby, Rust, Scala, and Scheme. It can also be used to develop documents with LaTeX and packages for the software Mathematica. Development environments include the Eclipse Java development tools for Java and Scala, Eclipse CDT for C/C++, and Eclipse PDT for PHP, among others.
The initial codebase originated from IBM VisualAge. The Eclipse software development kit, 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, 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 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. 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 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 is the fundamental license under which Eclipse projects are released. Some projects require dual licensing, for which the Eclipse Distribution License 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.

Name

According to Lee Nackman, Chief Technology Officer of IBM's Rational division at that time, the name "Eclipse" 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. 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.
, 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 YYYY-MM releases without intermediate service releases.
Version nameDatePlatform versionProjectsMain changes-
29 November 2001A 1.3 level Java runtime or Java development kit must be installed on the machine in order to run this version of Eclipse.-
18 September 2002-
15 April 2003A 1.4 level Java runtime or Java development kit can also be used to run Eclipse. It is still possible to use a 1.3 level Java runtime or Java development kit.-
21 June 2004A 1.4.1 level Java runtime or Java development kit must be installed on the machine in order to run this version of Eclipse.-
28 June 2005Added Java 5 support: generics, annotations, boxing-unboxing, enums, enhanced for loop, varargs, static imports-
Callisto26 June 2006Callisto projects-
Europa27 June 2007Europa projects-
Ganymede25 June 2008Ganymede projects-
Galileo24 June 2009Galileo projects-
Helios23 June 2010Helios projects-
Indigo22 June 2011Indigo projectsAdded Java 7 support : Improved Type Inference for Generic Instance Creation, Multi-catch, try-with-resources statement, Simplified Varargs Method Invocation, Strings in switch, Binary Literals and Underscores in Numeric Literals, Polymorphic Methods-
Juno27 June 2012
Juno projects-
Kepler26 June 2013Kepler projectsA Java 6 JRE/JDK is recommended to run this version.-
Luna25 June 2014Luna projectsIntegrated Java 8 support; in the prior version, this was possible via a Java 8 patch plug-in.
A Java 7 JRE/JDK is required to run most of the packages based on this version.		-
Mars24 June 2015Mars projectsA Java 7 JRE/JDK is required to run all packages based on this version.
Neon22 June 2016Neon projectsA Java 8 JRE/JDK is required to run all packages based on this version.
Oxygen28 June 2017Oxygen projectsOxygen.1a introduced Java 9 and Junit 5 support and Oxygen.3a introduced Java 10 support.
Dropped support for the following Unix based platforms: AIX, Solaris, HP-UX and s390.
From this version on, a Java 8 or newer JRE/JDK is required to run Eclipse.		-
Photon27 June 2018Photon projectsDropped support for 32bit Windows and Linux.-
2018-0919 September 20182018-09 projects-
2018-1219 December 20182018-12 projectsAdded support for Java 11.-
2019-0320 March 20192019-03 projects-
2019-0619 June 20192019-06 projects-
2019-0918 September 20192019-09 projects-
2019-1218 December 20192019-12 projects-
2020-0318 March 20202020-03 projectsUpdate support for Web Development languages, relying on Language Server Protocol-
2020-0617 June 20202020-06 projects-
2020-0916 September 20202020-09 projectsFrom this version on, a Java 11 or newer JRE/JDK is required to run Eclipse.-
2020-1216 December 20202020-12 projectsA JDK is embedded into most packages, so a Java installation is not a prerequisite anymore.-
2021-0317 March 20212021-03 projects-
2021-0616 June 20212021-06 projects-
2021-0915 September 20212021-09 projects-
2021-128 December 20212021-12 projects-
2022-0316 March 20222022-03 projects-
2022-0615 June 20222022-06 projects-
2022-0914 September 20222022-09 projectsFrom this version on, a Java 17 or newer JRE/JDK is required to run Eclipse.-
2022-127 December 20222022-12 projects-
2023-0315 March 20232023-03 projects-
2023-0614 June 20232023-06 projects-
2023-0913 September 20232023-09 projects-
2023-126 December 20232023-12 projects-
2024-0313 March 20242024-03 projects-
2024-0612 June 20242024-06 projects-
2024-0911 September 20242024-09 projects-
2024-124 December 20242024-12 projects-
2025-0312 March 20252025-03 projects-
2025-0611 June 20252025-06 projects-
2025-0910 September 20252025-09 projects-
2025-1210 December 20252025-12 projects-
2026-0311 March 20262026-03 projects-