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Hi Pals,
Herewith giving an overview about the famous OpenSource IDEs widely used.
Brief overview: Eclipse is a platform that has been designed from the ground up for building integrated web and application development tooling. Java development tooling (JDT) provided by Eclipse platform allows users to write, compile, test, debug, and edit programs written in the Java programming language. It is a universal IDE that can be used for development with Java, C, C++ & COBOL, manipulate web content, style sheets, and XML and even work with graphics and video. It’s open source, totally extensible, and already runs on Windows, Linux, and Solaris. Brief summary Eclipse features is: Java IDE, Team Programming (CVS, SCM Adapters), content-assist code completion, distributed Debugger, Workspace with Local History with powerful version compare tool, Pluggable JDK, scripting interface, fully pluggable architecture, Plug-in Developpement Environnement integrated help with embedded Browser, runs on Linux or Windows platforms, open-source, new native widget toolkit (SWT) instead of swing, coded in Java, ressources manager, fully customizable interface, integration with ANT build tool, file-based repository, incremental auto-build, incremental or full manual Build.
Our Experience: We currently use Eclipse 2.1 IDE over Windows XP.It is more userfreindly, extends inbuilt support for Ant and other open source utilities as plug-ins. The biggest advantage is its extensibility and open architecture. The most remarkable thing about the editor is the consistency in the user interface display on different platforms owing to its Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) architecture. (LATEST VERSION => 3.0)
Disadvantages: No support for custom user interface development.
Brief overview: JEdit is a mature and well-designed programmer's text editor that is released as free software with full source code, provided under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Some of jEdit's features include: Written in Java, so it runs on MacOS X, OS/2, Unix, VMS and Windows, built-in macro language, extensible plug-in architecture, availability of large number of macros and plug-ins, built in plug-in manager and updater, auto-completion, auto indent, syntax highlighting for more than 80 languages, supports a large number of character encodings including UTF8 and Unicode, Word wrap and highly configurable and customizable interface.
Our Experience: JEdit 4.2 is also user-freindly but next only compared to eclipse. It is a powerful word processor but not that powerful code editor for developing large enterprise applications.
Disadvantage: The auto-save utility is buggy and leaves a possibility of data loss. It is also slow to load.
Brief overview: A cross-platform IDE that includes an editor, tools for working with source code (Java, C++ and others), version control, and a lot more. The NetBeans Platform features include: Advanced syntax highlighting, error checking code editor, support for Java, C, C++, XML and HTML, Pluggable support for compilers, debuggers and execution services, support for JSP, XML, RMI, CORBA, JINI, JDBC and Servlet, support for Ant, CVS and other version control systems, Visual design tools wizards and code generation and management tools.
Our Experience: NetBeans is very user-friendly and easy to use editor for new users. It has visual interface to make learning easier. Though some of the features that can be added are profiling feature (for tracking leaks, CPU bottlenecks, etc.), project system (and the associated improved workflow), integrated emacs/vi, or emacs keybindings in the editor.
Disadvantage: Absence of refactoring tools and support for extensibility in the form of third party plug-ins.
Emacs is a great, free, cross-platform editor that does color syntax highlighting, automatic indentation, and paren/brace balancing. It also has a package (JDE) that lets you compile and run Java applications directly from the editor, just by using a pulldown menu. Also includes a good HTML mode and modes for many other programming languages. It has a highly configurable interface. There is also XEmacs, a variation of emacs that claims to have better user interfaces. The Java support (JDE) works identically in both versions.
One of the very powerful IDEs.
Disadvantage: Due to high extensibility and adaptability the learning curve for emacs is very high. The programming capabilities provided to program the editor itself go unused most of the times due to complexity involved.
Jext supports code editing in Java,C, C++, C#, ASP, PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby,
Disadvantage: Slow to load and memory consuming application. No extensive support to enterprise java application development.
The Schmortopf IDE is driven by a JavaCC generated parser. It has code-completion, syntax styling, object and text search actions, projectdefinitions, integrated JavaDoc generation and display, integrated creation of simple or signed JAR and JNLP archives and an UML feature. It has a complete automatic dependency mechanism, so that the compiler (JavaC) only compiles a minimal set of classes of your project. This results in fast develop-testrun cycles also for big projects. The structure of classfiles automatically is translated (using reflection) into java syntax. The IDE User Interface is available in english, german and french, and comes with a language translation editor, which allows you to generate language packs for any language, which fits into 16 bit Unicode space.
Disadvantage: The resource requirements like memory etc are high.
The Sheets Hypercode Environment (or simply "Sheets") is an advanced programming environment for Java. In Sheets, programs are divided into fragments, which are stored in ordered containers called sheets. Sheets are themselves fragments, so you can have nested sheets. Although a sheet-full of fragments looks a lot like a file, it can do things that a file can't. For example, the same fragment can exist on multiple sheets, so that you can show several different organizations of the same code. Note that these are not just copies of other code, but exactly the same objects. When a fragment is edited on one sheet, the change is instantly reflected on all other sheets. By internally representing programs this way, Sheets can provide features that other environments do not. In particular, Sheets provides very good navigation facilities.
Disadvantage: A completely new paradigm of editor results in a higher learning curve for the programmers.
Ginipad is an Integrated Developemente Environment for Java, written in Java and distributed freely under the General Public License (GPL). The Graphical User Interface has been explicitly designed to provide a simple and comfortable acces to an high level of functionality. For this reason, Ginipad is the best choice for beginners, but can also be appreciated by those power users who prefer using a small tool when managing small projects.
Disadvantage: Not a great utility for large projects and needs migration to another IDE when developing large projects.
Simredo is a free Java Unicode editor. Its features include: the ability to convert over 100 encodings to and from Unicode, a flexible keymap function, support for right-to-left languages such as Arabic, Persian, etc., an English, French, or Esperanto user interface, a spell-checker for English and Esperanto, an encryption function, and a new conversion function which allows users to define their own conversion tables.
Disadvantage: absence of code completion and inclusion of many specifically required features.