The Active Ecosystem of Eclipse Theia Adopters: A Tour of Diverse Tools and IDEs

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Eclipse Theia is increasingly used as a foundation for building modern integrated development environments (IDEs) and domain-specific tools. As an open source platform designed for creating extensible web-based and desktop IDEs, Theia offers a modular architecture that organisations can adapt to suit their particular development workflows and requirements.

Over time, this has led to the emergence of a growing ecosystem of adopters, ranging from microcontroller IDEs created by individual developers to complex enterprise-grade engineering platforms. Many of them build upon Theia’s composable architecture to address very different needs.

In this article, we take a closer look at a selection of publicly available tools built on Theia, covering a broad spectrum of use cases, domains, and contributors. These examples illustrate the diversity and activity within the Theia community, and may help others explore why and how Theia could be a good foundation for their own projects.

Embedded & IoT development: Makers meet industry

One notable example of a Theia-based tool is Arduino IDE 2.0, which is built on Eclipse Theia. This version represents a technical evolution of the Arduino development environment, aiming to offer a more modern experience while preserving the simplicity that made it popular.

By adopting Theia’s framework, the Arduino team was able to integrate capabilities such as advanced code editing, navigation, and debugging, while maintaining a clean and responsive user interface. The move also made it easier to incorporate components like the Monaco editor and Language Server Protocol (LSP) support.

In this Eclipse Foundation adopter story, the Arduino team described how Theia’s extensibility helped them introduce features like a custom toolbar while keeping the IDE accessible for beginners, all within an ecosystem that supports rich extension mechanisms.

Texas Instruments is among the organisations that have chosen to rebuild an existing IDE on top of Eclipse Theia. Their tool, Code Composer Studio™ (CCS), is a comprehensive development environment for working with TI’s microcontrollers.

By transitioning from a Eclipse (RCP-based) IDE to Theia, the TI team aimed to modernise the architecture and user experience of CCS, while also preparing the tool for future deployment scenarios, including in the cloud. The updated version of CCS retains its focus on embedded development, while benefiting from Theia’s extensibility and support for modern UI paradigms.

This evolution was presented by TI at TheiaCon in 2024, offering insights into their migration path and the choices that guided the redesign.

Arm selected Eclipse Theia as the foundation for Mbed Studio, its desktop IDE for developing applications and libraries with Mbed OS. The IDE is available for free and is intended to support cross-platform development workflows for IoT.

By building on Theia, Arm was able to offer a modern development environment while retaining strong integration with Mbed-specific workflows. Theia’s architecture also made it possible to support VS Code extensions, enabling developers to extend the IDE with a familiar and widely adopted plugin model.

Renesas has adopted Eclipse Theia as the basis for QuickConnect Studio, a cloud-based platform designed to support the visual development of hardware and software prototypes.

Leveraging Theia’s web-first architecture, QuickConnect Studio runs entirely in the browser, offering engineers a drag-and-drop environment to configure hardware, write and edit code, and validate prototypes, all without the need for local installation.

Enterprise & industrial engineering IDEs

In the industrial automation domain, logi.cals has built logi.CLOUD on top of Eclipse Theia. This engineering platform combines Theia with other technologies such as Eclipse GLSP to support visual programming and debugging workflows in the browser.

logi.CLOUD provides engineers with graphical editors for IEC 61131-3 languages, including Ladder, Function Block, and Structured Text, as well as live debugging features, all integrated into a web-based development environment.

Several enterprise tool providers have also chosen to migrate existing IDEs to Theia. Lonti, for example, has replatformed Martini Designer from Eclipse RCP to a new architecture based on Theia.

This transition enabled them to bring together different capabilities, including API integration, low-code workflows, and traditional coding, into a unified environment available both as a desktop and cloud IDE. Theia’s modular design made it possible to combine visual editors, scripting support, version control, and debugging within a single platform.

IBM and HCL collaborated on Code RealTime, a tool for building stateful, event-driven real-time C++ applications.

The desktop version can run on both VS Code and Theia, while the cloud version runs exclusively on Theia. At TheiaCon 2023, IBM and HCL demonstrated how Theia’s open architecture allowed them to provide a browser-based, zero-install IDE in addition to the desktop solution.

In the mobile development space, Smartface IDE is built on Eclipse Theia to support cross-platform application development. It enables developers to create iOS and Android apps from a single JavaScript/TypeScript codebase, with support for Windows, macOS, and Linux environments.

By relying on Theia as the underlying platform, Smartface was able to focus on implementing mobile-specific features while benefiting from an extensible and cross-platform foundation.

Specialised domain tools

Eclipse Theia is also used as a foundation for domain-specific tools in specialized areas. Samsung, for example, developed Sokatoa, a GPU profiling and debugging environment based on Theia.

During TheiaCon 2024, Samsung presented how they extended Theia to support features such as GPU performance tracing, timeline visualization, and custom debugging panels tailored to their use case.

In the field of machine vision, MVTec has modernized its long-established IDE by introducing HDevelop EVO, built on Eclipse Theia.

This new version provides a refreshed user interface and a more modern editing experience, while also laying the groundwork for future browser-based deployment, made possible by Theia’s web-capable architecture.

In the game development space, VUEngine Studio is a dedicated IDE created for the retro-style VUEngine game framework.

Based on Eclipse Theia, the IDE integrates custom components such as asset managers, level editors, and debugging tools, all tailored specifically to the needs of the framework and its runtime environment.

Theia is also used in emerging fields that combine IoT and AI. Record Evolution has developed ReSWARM Studio, a platform built on Theia that supports collaborative management of IoT devices as well as deployment of AI models. This setup benefits from Theia’s extensibility to address domain-specific workflows involving distributed hardware and machine learning components.

Cloud IDE services & education

Acquia Cloud IDE is another example of a development environment built on Eclipse Theia, this time tailored for web and CMS developers

The platform provides a browser-based IDE preconfigured for Drupal and PHP development, allowing users to start coding without needing to set up local environments. Theia’s architecture supports this kind of integration by enabling fully online, ready-to-use workspaces.

Platforms focused on technical training are also adopting Theia. KillerCoda integrates a Theia-based IDE into its interactive labs for learning Linux and Kubernetes.

This setup allows learners to write and run code, execute commands, and complete hands-on exercises, all directly within the browser, without needing to install any local tools.

In academic settings, Eclipse Theia is also being adopted to support teaching environments. At the Technical University of Munich, the Artemis platform integrates Theia into its programming courses.

This approach enables the delivery of customized, browser-based IDEs for students, requiring no local installation and allowing for a consistent setup across different learning scenarios.

For younger audiences, Coding Park has built a cloud-based learning platform using Eclipse Theia. The environment introduces learners to Python and web development through interactive games and project-based activities.

By running entirely in the browser, the IDE is accessible without installation and can be used across a variety of devices, making it well-suited for educational contexts.

AI-powered community tools

Within the community itself, a version of the AI-powered Theia IDE is maintained to explore and showcase AI-related features. This AI-enabled environment demonstrates how Theia can support emerging workflows around AI-assisted development.

Another example is Eclipse CDT Cloud, which serves as a reference implementation of a C/C++ cloud-based IDE built on Theia. It illustrates how Theia can be adapted for use in more specialised development ecosystems.

Many more “in the dark”

These examples are only the publicly known adopters. Because of its permissive open source nature and white-label flexibility, many tools are quietly running on Theia.

If you’re using Theia internally or in a product, consider becoming visible! The EclipseSource guide on becoming a visible Theia adopter explains how this helps the entire ecosystem.

Conclusion

The wide range of tools built on Eclipse Theia, from embedded systems to education platforms, from AI-powered environments to enterprise-grade IDEs, illustrates the platform’s adaptability across diverse domains and use cases.

This diversity is made possible by Theia’s modular architecture and its foundation as a truly open source project governed by the Eclipse Foundation. Its vendor-neutral governance model ensures openness and sustainability, allowing organisations to adopt and extend the platform on their own terms, whether for desktop, cloud, or hybrid environments.

Theia is not intended as a direct replacement for the Eclipse IDE or Eclipse RCP, but rather as a new technical foundation designed to support modern tool development. It complements the Eclipse Foundation’s development tools ecosystem by offering reusable building blocks for organisations looking to deliver tailored IDEs.

As more adopters share their experiences and extend the ecosystem, Theia continues to evolve as a solid and flexible base for next-generation IDEs and domain-specific tools, built openly, collaboratively, and with long-term clarity.