Eclipse is an integrated development environment (IDE) 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 (including the Ruby on Rails framework), Rust, Scala, and Scheme. It can also be used to develop documents with LaTeX (via a TeXlipse plug-in) and packages for the software Mathematica. Development environments include the Eclipse Java development tools (JDT) 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 (SDK), 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 (released in 2004), plug-ins are installed and managed as "bundles" using Equinox, an implementation of OSGi."500 lines or less: Eclipse " says "With the switch to OSGi, Eclipse plugins became known as bundles"
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 (IDE) 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 (somewhat like a zip file but in .dat). 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 (released on 21 June 2004) 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 (EPL) is the fundamental license under which Eclipse projects are released. Some projects require dual licensing, for which the Eclipse Distribution License (EDL) 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 (GPL).
Name According to Lee Nackman, Chief Technology Officer of IBM's Rational division (originating in 2003) at that time, the name "Eclipse" (dating from at least 2001) 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 (which is produced by the sun). 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 (13 week) YYYY-MM releases without intermediate service releases.
Version name Date Platform version Projects Main changes 29 November 2001 A 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 2003 A 1.4 level Java runtime or Java development kit (JDK) can also be used to run Eclipse. It is still possible to use a 1.3 level Java runtime or Java development kit (JDK). 21 June 2004 A 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 2005 Added Java 5 support: generics, annotations, boxing-unboxing, enums, enhanced for loop, varargs, static imports Callisto 26 June 2006 Callisto projects Europa 27 June 2007 Europa projects Ganymede 25 June 2008 Ganymede projects Galileo 24 June 2009 Galileo projects Helios 23 June 2010 Helios projects Indigo 22 June 2011 Indigo projects Added Java 7 support (3.7.1 sr1): Improved Type Inference for Generic Instance Creation (Diamond), Multi-catch, try-with-resources statement, Simplified Varargs Method Invocation, Strings in switch, Binary Literals and Underscores in Numeric Literals, Polymorphic Methods Juno 27 June 2012 Juno projects Kepler 26 June 2013 Kepler projects A Java 6 JRE/JDK is recommended to run this version. Luna 25 June 2014 Luna 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. Mars 24 June 2015 Mars projects A Java 7 JRE/JDK is required to run all packages based on this version. Neon 22 June 2016 Neon projects A Java 8 JRE/JDK is required to run all packages based on this version. Oxygen 28 June 2017 Oxygen projects Oxygen.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. Photon 27 June 2018 Photon projects Dropped support for 32bit Windows and Linux. 2018-09 19 September 2018 2018-09 projects 2018-12 19 December 2018 2018-12 projects Added support for Java 11. 2019-03 20 March 2019 2019-03 projects 2019-06 19 June 2019 2019-06 projects 2019-09 18 September 2019 2019-09 projects 2019-12 18 December 2019 2019-12 projects 2020-03 18 March 2020 2020-03 projectsUpdate support for Web Development languages, relying on Language Server Protocol 2020-06 17 June 2020 2020-06 projects 2020-09 16 September 2020 2020-09 projects From this version on, a Java 11 or newer JRE/JDK is required to run Eclipse. 2020-12 16 December 2020 2020-12 projectsA JDK is embedded into most packages, so a Java installation is not a prerequisite anymore. 2021-03 17 March 2021 2021-03 projects 2021-06 16 June 2021 2021-06 projects 2021-09 15 September 2021 2021-09 projects 2021-12 8 December 2021 2021-12 projects 2022-03 16 March 2022 2022-03 projects 2022-06 15 June 2022 2022-06 projects 2022-09 14 September 2022 2022-09 projects From this version on, a Java 17 or newer JRE/JDK is required to run Eclipse. 2022-12 7 December 2022 2022-12 projects 2023-03 15 March 2023 2023-03 projects 2023-06 14 June 2023 2023-06 projects 2023-09 13 September 2023 2023-09 projects 2023-12 6 December 2023 2023-12 projects 2024-03 13 March 2024 2024-03 projects 2024-06 12 June 2024 2024-06 projects From this version on, a Java 21 or newer JRE/JDK is required to run Eclipse. 2024-09 11 September 2024 2024-09 projects 2024-12 4 December 2024 2024-12 projects2025-0312 March 20252025-03 projects2025-0611 June 20252025-06 projects2025-0910 September 20252025-09 projects2025-1210 December 20252025-12 projects2026-0311 March 20262026-03 projects2026-0610 June 20262026-06 projects2026-099 September 20262026-09 projects2026-129 December 20262026-12 projects
Architecture Eclipse uses plug-ins to provide all the functionality within and on top of the run-time system. Its run-time system is based on Equinox, an implementation of the OSGi core framework specification.
In addition to allowing the Eclipse Platform to be extended using other programming languages, such as C and Python, the plug-in framework allows the Eclipse Platform to work with typesetting languages like LaTeX and networking applications such as telnet and database management systems. The plug-in architecture supports writing any desired extension to the environment, such as for configuration management. Java and CVS support is provided in the Eclipse SDK, with support for other version control systems provided by third-party plug-ins.
With the exception of a small run-time kernel, everything in Eclipse is a plug-in. Thus, every plug-in developed integrates with Eclipse in the same way as other plug-ins; in this respect, all features are "created equal". Eclipse provides plug-ins for a wide variety of features, some of which are from third parties using both free and commercial models. Examples of plug-ins include for Unified Modeling Language (UML), for Sequence and other UML diagrams, a plug-in for DB Explorer, and many more.
The Eclipse SDK includes the Eclipse Java development tools (JDT), offering an IDE with a built-in Java incremental compiler and a full model of the Java source files. This allows for advanced refactoring techniques and code analysis. The IDE also makes use of a workspace, in this case a set of metadata over a flat filespace allowing external file modifications as long as the corresponding workspace resource is refreshed afterward.
Eclipse implements the graphical control elements of the Java toolkit called Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT), whereas most Java applications use the Java standard Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT), Swing, or JavaFX. Eclipse's user interface also uses an intermediate graphical user interface layer called JFace, which simplifies the construction of applications based on SWT. Eclipse was made to run on Wayland during a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) Project in 2014.
, language packs being developed by the Babel Project provide translations into over 40 natural languages.
Rich client platform Eclipse provides the rich client platform (RCP) for developing general-purpose applications.
The following components constitute the rich client platform: Equinox OSGi – a standard bundling framework