As is already indicated by version 0.9, which has just been released, Eclipse 4 will incorporate several familiar web technologies and put them to new uses. The Eclipse development environment has become a very popular open source project.

IBM first brought Eclipse to the development scene in November 2001 as a project supported by a software vendor consortium. Three years later, Eclipse Foundation became an independent entity with a stewardship role. IBM nonetheless remains a key cheerleader for the community.

This article describes the various refactorings available in Eclipse Java™ Development Tools (JDT), including what each refactoring does, when to use it, and how to use it. It also explores the refactoring script functionality in Eclipse, which allows library developers to share code refactorings with their clients.

I'm taking Stanford's Open Courseware "Programming Methodology" this semester, but I got stumped early on by the problem of setting up the special Stanford class libraries in my Debian-standard Eclipse installation. The instructions and files available from the website are only available for Windows and Macintosh platforms.

Learn the new features introduced in Eclipse Galileo for using the new toString() generator. This tip for generating code uses new features introduced in Eclipse Galileo. However, you can use some of the techniques covered here — such as generating getters and setters — in older versions of Eclipse, such as Ganymede, as well.

The Jetty developers have released version 7 of their popular Java Servlet container. The source code for the new release is available from the Eclipse Foundation under the Eclipse Public Licence (EPL); Jetty 6 continues to be available from the Codehaus project under the Apache 2 license.

The Eclipse Foundation has launched a project to develop an open-source runtime that would provide developers with a more flexible way to use components to build software for mobile, desktop and server systems. The new, top-level Eclipse Runtime project aims to develop a new runtime based on Equinox, an existing Eclipse lightweight OSGi-based runtime. The new top-line project will link together various Eclipse subgroups, including Eclipse Communication Framework, EclipseLink, Equinox, Rich Ajax Platform, Riena and Swordfish.

The Eclipse RT (runtime) top-level project could soon be getting a new participant, thanks to a code donation from VMware's SpringSource Java division.

Eclipse is a new world for Microsoft® Visual Studio® developers, and getting started with Eclipse can be confusing. New concepts, such as plug-in architecture, workspace-centric project structure, and automatic build can seem counterintuitive at first. Learn about these and other differences between the two environments, so that you can begin to feel at home with Eclipse.