Select the appropriate Eclipse release

Which Eclipse release is appropriate for your use? The commercial release (distros) based on Eclipse Europa will provide a variety of features and facilities. Many commercial distributions also offer free editions or Community editions for downloading and use. This article compares CodeGear JBuilder 2008 Turbo Beta, Nexb easyeclipse, IBM Europa packs, and innoopract on yoxo distributions-all of which allow you to download prepackaged , custom version of Eclipse Europa, and many of these distributions already contain plug-ins and tools to get you started immediately.

The Eclipse integrated Development Environment (IDE) is an extensible platform on which many plug-ins and extensions are built. The infrastructure platform allows you to add everything you need to build the IDE that meets your needs.

Basic platforms and plug-ins and extension sets are built on the Equinox OSGi framework, which is the implementation of the OSGi R4 Core Framework specification (see Resources). In essence, OSGi provides a way to build Eclipse (platform) into plug-ins and extension sets, combined with plug-ins and extensions to create services that provide functionality. This framework is why the Eclipse platform is extensible and can support many languages and features.

If you are using the Eclipse platform, you can get almost all of the functionality you need in a download file. You just need to find the right distribution (distro), determine the licensing model or pricing model for your work, and then download and use the release. Each distribution offers different features-some features specific to a vendor or distributor-but they are all built on the same platform: Eclipse.

If eclipse is installed and you need to see what features and Plug-ins are installed on your system, open the About window for eclipse. In a window similar to that shown in Figure 1 (this window may vary depending on the distribution or vendor), click Feature Details. The list of attributes and their suppliers is displayed, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 1. About Eclipse Platform window

Figure 2. Attribute details

To see which version of the plug-in is installed, click Plug-in Details. You will see a complete list of plug-ins, including the vendor, version, and ID.

Figure 3. View plug-in Details