What’s happening with Java IDEs?

The past few weeks have brought some interesting news about development environments 
 for Java. Maybe, like me, you hadn't had a chance to try Eclipse 3.1 M7 when
 3.1 RC1 turned up, followed by RC2.

If you're unfamiliar with the finer points of Eclipse, version 3.1 is supposed to bring full support for Java 5.0, rather late in the day. Sun's NetBeans team in Prague has also put a lot of work into version 4.1. 
You can see NetBeans 4.1 in all its glory, with demos of all the new features, in Roman Strobl's online presentation.

Rick Ross (founder of Javalobby) wrote in his
 article Multiple IDEs and practicing what I preach about NetBeans 4.1 and Eclipse. Rick is particularly positive about the new GUI builder codenamed Matisse, which is supposed to come with version 4.1. The article also discusses plug-ins.

JSR 198 — Plug-ins and portability

The article shows very well how differently the two IDEs approach plug-ins. Eclipse is practically synonymous with plug-ins. According to the article there are more than 800 officially registered, with more arriving every day. NetBeans, by comparison, has a mere 90. Rick Ross has a genuinely fresh suggestion: Sun should follow Google's Summer of Code and offer financial incentives to develop plug-ins.

I rather doubt Sun will do anything like that, but it should certainly heed the call of JSR 198. The Standard Extension API for Integrated Development 
Environments, also known as JSR 198 and opened by Oracle in 2002, is an attempt to unify the programming 
interface so plug-ins can work across IDEs. The standard would cover several areas.

• Access to source code text
• Access to project information
• Ability to add new UI components pretty much everywhere (menus, settings tabs, wizards, etc.)
• Ability to invoke common IDE dialogs (warnings, messages, errors)
• Document access through a virtual file system
• Interaction with the compiler and debugger
• Ability to add new document types
• A common manifest file-format for specifying plugin parameters (plugin name & description, 
  classpaths, bindings and other dependencies)

More on JSR 198

• Sebastian Ferreyra, Javalobby JSR 198: Standard IDE Extension 
  Architecture
• Floyd Marinescu, TheServerSide JSR 198 IDE extension API still alive: Early 
  Draft Review Posted

JBuilder moves to Eclipse

I've saved a treat for JBuilder users. Borland announced that the next version of the JBuilder IDE, codenamed Peloton and due in the first half of 2006, will be based entirely on Eclipse! Did that take your breath away? Don't worry. Read Floyd Marinescu's post Borland announces JBuilder Roadmap future will be Eclipse-based on TSS.