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Eclipse SDK 4.0 Now Available for Early Adopters

Community Bulletin

July 28, 2010 - The Eclipse Foundation is pleased to announce the availability of Eclipse SDK 4.0, the next generation Eclipse platform. Eclipse has a very large and successful ecosystem of plugin providers and RCP application developers. Eclipse 4.0 introduces new features that make it easier for the members of the ecosystem to build and assemble Eclipse plugins and RCP applications.

Some of the new features introduced in Eclipse 4.0 include:

  • A model-based user interface framework to specifying the widgets in an application's user interface. This provides the developer a lot more flexibility to design a modern looking UI and remove the 'IDE-ness' that was often introduced into RCP applications.
  • A new CSS-based declarative mechanism for application styling allows you to change the skin of an application with CSS style sheets.
  • A services-oriented programming model makes it easier to use the services provided by the Eclipse platform.

Eclipse 4.0 is for early adopters of Eclipse technology. It is highly recommended that plug-in and RCP developers begin to migrate their existing solutions to the 4.0 platform. Full binary compatibility with API from previous Eclipse 3.x platform releases makes the migration process as simple as possible.

Users of Eclipse tools, such as the Eclipse Java IDE (JDT) or Eclipse Web Tools, are not expected to benefit from migrating to Eclipse 4.0 at this time. Users will benefit from the new user interface improvements in Eclipse 4.0 but they will need to wait for the value-add tools and plugins provided by other Eclipse Foundation projects and the broader ecosystem to migrate to the 4.0 platform.

The Eclipse e4 incubation project is also releasing several new technologies to support the adoption of Eclipse 4.0, including:

  • The XWT declarative UI design tool.
  • Tools to help create model-based user interfaces.
  • Semantic file system: a mechanism for connecting the platform resource model to remote resources exposed via REST-style APIs.
  • Support for integrating JavaScript and OpenSocial-based views in a rich client.

More information about Eclipse 4.0, including the download, can be found at eclipse.org/eclipse4. The Eclipse e4 incubation projects can be downloaded from a p2 repository located at http://download.eclipse.org/e4/updates/2010 .

About the Eclipse Foundation

Eclipse is an open source community, whose projects are focused on building an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle. A large, vibrant ecosystem of major technology vendors, innovative start-ups, universities and research institutions and individuals extend, complement and support the Eclipse Platform.

The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit, member supported corporation that hosts the Eclipse projects. Full details of Eclipse and the Eclipse Foundation are available at eclipse.org



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