Germany-based plug-in
a program that ensures other Eclipse plug-ins are up-to-date and compatible
with the popular Java tools platform.
Yoxos is a $19.95 CD or download that includes a bundled version of Eclipse
3.0, as well as about 50 of the more popular plug-ins used on the platform.
Also included is the org.eclipse.jdt runtime and
AspectJ, the aspect-oriented programming language.
The software comes with the plug-ins already installed and configured with
Eclipse 3.0. Among those available include CSSEditor, Sysdeo Eclipse
Tomcat Launcher, Spindle, SQLExplorer, Hibernate Synchronizer, Visual
Editor, Eclipse Wiki Editor, Eclipse Instant Messenger, Javadoc Builder and
Flow4J.
Officials say the streamline distribution of the platform and
plug-ins cuts down on the time spent looking for and updating software and
then getting it to run on the tools platform.
Eric von der Heyden, a managing director at Innoopract, said Eclipse is
somewhat the victim of its own success; there’s a great number of plug-ins
available, open source and otherwise, but finding one that works for a
particular business can be daunting, what with more than 500 plug-ins
available for the Eclipse platform.
“Eclipse has become popular much more quickly than anyone had expected,”
von der Heyden continued, “and the ecosystem has grown so rapidly that Eclipse users are given all these
choices and have lots of possibilities. But everything’s developing so
quickly that getting their arms around it can be overwhelming,” he said.
“You invest a lot of time in it, and the next thing you know there’s a new
version of Eclipse or a new version of the five plug-ins you use every day.
“It’s almost a distraction from the development environment,” he continued.
“You’re spending almost all your time thinking, ‘What are the tools I need
to develop?'”
Officials plan to release a new version of Yoxos, now at 1.0, every two
months. The updates will contain new plug-ins they support, depending on customer
demand through its online forums or e-mail requests.
They also promise that
any extensions used to integrate open source plug-ins with the Eclipse
platform will be donated back to the community.
von der Heyden said beginning next year at this time with the scheduled
release of Eclipse 3.1, Innoopract will start up a $100 yearly subscription
service that will provide the six yearly updates, as opposed to the $19.95
single download/CD.
Keeping a rein on the sometimes-daunting number of open source projects
surrounding Eclipse can be somewhat daunting, said Jochen Krause, Innoopract
founder and president. But despite the number of plug-ins available, 500
and growing, not much effort has taken place in the community to manage them
all from a central location. He said the Eclipse plug-in quandary mirrors
the problems experienced with another popular open-source environment.
“We’ve seen such comparable things happen in other environments, for example
with Linux,” he said. “There are new distributions like Linux from scratch
where people start all over again and get their content from 200 different
sites.”
