Eclipse IDE Keeps Pace with Faster Java Releases -- ADTmag

Eclipse IDE Keeps Pace with Faster Java Releases

By John K. Waters
March 26, 2019

Last week's Java 12 release wasn't the only byproduct of Oracle's faster release cadence. The Eclipse Foundation also announced the third quarterly release of the Eclipse IDE, along with 75 participating projects.

For more than a decade the Foundation had shipped a major release every June in coordination with a growing list of Eclipse projects in what was called a "release train." The Foundation didn't invent the concept, but it used it effectively to demonstrate to potential users that open source products could be reliably updated, which popularized the approach.

But Oracle's own adaptation to the changing demands of the developer community for smaller but more frequent platform and tooling upgrades made the release train obsolete, said the Foundation's executive director, Mike Milinkovich, in an earlier interview. The June 2018 Oxygen release train was the last of its kind.

The organization now employs a "rolling release model," shipping upgrades to its core IDE and participating projects every quarter. "Oracle upped the game for us," Milinkovich said. "We don't want to line up our releases exactly with Oracle's, but we do want to make sure we're always current.... As they demonstrate over time that they're going to be able to do this on a regular and predictable basis, that'll only help us."

The Foundation's latest quarterly release comprises a wide range of Eclipse projects (detailed here), including the Eclipse IDE 2019-03. The list of "new and noteworthy projects" highlighted by the organization in this release includes:

Eclipse OCL, an implementation of the Object Constraint Language (OCL) OMG standard for EMF-based models.
Eclipse EGit, Eclipse's implementation of the Git version control system.
Eclipse JGit, an EDL (new-style BSD) licensed, lightweight, pure Java library implementing the Git version control system
Eclipse Platform, Java Development Tools (JDT), Plug-in Development Environment (PDE) and Equinox
Eclipse Wild Web Developer, a Web development tool in the Eclipse IDE
Eclipse Xtext, a framework for development of programming languages and domain specific languages.

The list of new updates aimed at Java developers in this release includes support for Java 12, JUnit 5.4, and updates of the Java Editor and Formatter.

The Eclipse IDE 2019-03 is available for download now.

About the Author

John K. Waters is the editor in chief of a number of Converge360.com sites, with a focus on high-end development, AI and future tech. He's been writing about cutting-edge technologies and culture of Silicon Valley for more than two decades, and he's written more than a dozen books. He also co-scripted the documentary film Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance, which aired on PBS. He can be reached at [email protected].