Is eclipse platform independent?
As per my knowledge, eclipse is written in java. If it is so eclipse should be platform independent. But there are different eclipse for different OS???
+5
A:
No, you need to download a platform specific version because of SWT which accesses the native GUI libraries of the operating system using JNI. Note that Eclipse provides versions for most platforms (see for example All Platforms for the Eclipse SDK 3.5.1).
Pascal Thivent
2010-01-15 04:35:31
I think I misunderstood the question, this is the correct answer
yx
2010-01-15 04:37:22
My understanding is that it should build on any platform that has a full J2SE (since AWT/Swing are supposedly supported on any platform). SWT just looks better if you've got a platform-specific library.
Uri
2010-01-15 04:45:46
@Uri - that's not correct. SWT is not built on AWT/Swing. It uses its own native libraries to interact with the local windowing system.
Stephen C
2010-01-15 04:52:46
@Stephen: I thought that there was a version of SWT that was supposed to use Swing/AWT specifically to handle platforms that don't have a custom implementation?
Uri
2010-01-15 05:20:10
@Uri - I think that is not true. There is a thing called the SWT/AWT bridge that allows you to use AWT/Swing components in an Eclipse plugin. But that won't let you run Eclipse on a platform. There are a couple of 3rd-party projects to implement SWT over Swing, but they are not officially supported / endorsed by Eclipse ... AFAIK.
Stephen C
2010-01-15 06:19:05
In fact there is version of SWT library built on top of Swing, but it is 3rd party library, and its development has stalled. It is not bundled in Eclipse. http://swtswing.sourceforge.net/screenshots/
Peter Štibraný
2010-01-15 06:36:53
+2
A:
There are distributions of Eclipse for most Intel/AMD based platforms and for major UNIXs. You are also supposed to be able to compile and build it yourself on other platforms.
The differences stem primarily from three issues:
1) Availability of needed Java distribution on the platform (e.g., late introduction of newer Java versions on Mac).
2) 32bit vs. 64bit
3) Underlying UI toolkit While Eclipse can run under Swing, it may look like crap and perform pretty badly. People often expect more from the IDE, so the SWT can use some native widgets. Some plug-ins also need more direct access to the graphic subsystem. This, there are specific distributions of Eclipse that use specific platform graphic infrastructure. The most notable example is again Mac OS, where there was initially a version for Carbon, but only much later did a Cocoa version show up.
Uri
2010-01-15 04:44:41
Can Eclipse **really** run using Swing? I didn't think there was a SWT-backend for Swing.
JesperE
2010-01-17 19:40:18
A:
If it is 100% java-based application, yes it will be platform independent. The problem is some code of Eclipse is not Java, so it's obvious that because of this code, Eclipse is not 100% platform independent. You can however just change that particular native jars with the suitable jars for your platform and Eclipse will then run correctly.
nanda
2010-01-15 08:14:26