Che Glossary
This section provides an overview of the main terms and expressions used throughout Eclipse Che documentation.
Naming
- Eclipse Che
-
A developer platform for the cloud that provides an in-browser IDE. Che tools can be extended by adding development services, such as language servers, debug adapters, or editors (IDEs) packaged as containers.
- Che-Theia
-
The default editor component of a Che workspace. It is a Che-specific customization of the Eclipse Theia editor. Che-Theia can be extended using Che-Theia plugins, which are packaged as containers for ease of deployment and use. Che-Theia plugins are mostly compatible with Visual Studio extensions.
- Che Workspace
-
A container-based development environment managed by Eclipse Che. Every Che workspace is defined by a devfile. A Che workspace is composed of an editor, runtime and build containers and other development tools running inside containers.
Terminology
- Editor
-
A web application that is used as an editor in a workspace.
- Plugin
-
Plugins are services that extend Che workspace capabilities. Che plugins are packaged as containers. Plugins are extensions of an editor or a service running in the container. For example, the Che-Theia editor is compatible with Visual Studio Code extensions. Both Che plugins and editors are distributed through the Che plugin registry.
- Workspace
-
A container based development environment managed by Eclipse Che. Every Che workspace is defined by a devfile. A Che workspace can be composed by an editor, some plugins and runtime containers. Workspace runtime containers can be defined as simple container images or as Kubernetes or OpenShift resources. A Che Workspace can be associated with source code projects hosted on a remote CVS server. A Che Workspace can contain the definition of one or more commands such as
run
,build
, ordebug
. - Devfile
-
A workspace configuration template. Devfiles are used to create workspaces in the Dashboard. A devfile includes metadata such as scope, tags, components, description, name, and identification. VS Code API is one of the plugin APIs that can be used in Theia.
- Factory
-
A template that contains the configuration to automate the generation of a new workspace using a factory identifier or a devfile added to the URL of the IDE. Use factories to create replicas of existing workspaces or to automate the provisioning of statically or dynamically defined workspaces.
- Project
-
A source code repository.