this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024

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Open Source 'Eclipse Theia IDE' Exits Beta to Challenge Visual Studio Code -- Visual Studio Magazine (visualstudiomagazine.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

67 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The project home page.

The Github

Looks just like VS Code and I think it's still built on electron so take that as you will.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

This could actually be a pretty big deal

The Eclipse foundation has been making alternatives to VS Code's "killer apps" (Docker, Python, Go, C++, SSH, Live share, etc). AKA the closed source ones exclusive to VS Code offical that make all forks of VS Code a huge downgrade. The Eclipse foundation is also running the extension store that powers VS Codium.
"why not just use VS Codium?" (With the killer extensions made by Eclipse)
- VS Codium is great, but because of manpower limits, they always have to be "downstream" of VS Code. They can't rewrite any of the core systems.
- As someone who contributes to VS Code, and loves VS Codium, many issues I have with VS Code have been open on github for +7 years, with hundreds of comments and thumbs-ups. We can't even sort the file explorer view by last-edited and folders-first (but we can do folders-first alphabetical). Thats been open since 2017.
- Theia looks like it could finally be the hard fork I've been waiting for. A hackable editor, trying to be open source, where all my extensions work, and the community can actually make a PR, get it merged, and extensions are not excessively sandboxed.
- Will it be that? Only time will tell, but the Eclipse foundation has a pretty good record. They're definitely prepared for long term support.

[–] wesifa 28 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

I feel like VS Code is in a very weird place right now.

To just be productive, you need a ton of plugins and often enough these don't really solve all the problems you might have. For example, there's no "java dev" package, instead you have to install a meta-package plus a bunch of other random crap, half of which don't really work out of the box. Or, if you want to use the advanced features, you have to live with weird constraints and bugs. The UI isn't really designed to incorporate more advanced plugins and the plugins themselves often don't work as expected. For example, for some reason, if you connect to a remote host, the java LSP needs the java home dir to be in the same path on both machines, which is just weird.

For a text editor it's way too bloated, but for an IDE it's way to barebones. The days of the nimble and fast advanced editor are gone,

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There's a black python extension (only downloaded it following a django tutorial) and it did nothing it was supposed to. So I'm not sure what it's intentions were.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I use lazyvim and this is my experience in neovim as well. I don't think it's a weird place, it just puts the onus on the end-user to tailor their experience.

[–] TCB13 9 points 5 months ago

Great sum up, yes, the major issue with VS Code is the licensing issues that Microsoft caused there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

As a Codium user trying to choose more open tools, I really appreciate your write up, here.

Thank you.

I'll check it out.

[–] calcopiritus 49 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Why would they copy VSCode including the aspect people hate most.

Had they made it in a native gui I might actually consider it. Otherwise, why wouldn't I just choose vscode.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago

Ease of plugin development is a major boon

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[–] spacemanspiffy 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I wonder where JetBrains Fleet is at, too.

I am happy there is more competition against VS Code. But I already have my forever-editor (Neovim).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I believe fleet is still in preview. I'm not a power user so I can't tell you how it compares to VS Code.

[–] qaz 4 points 5 months ago

Fleet is pretty good, it's almost like a combination of the existing jetbrains products (but some features are missing). However, it's not open source so I probably won't be using it.

[–] umbraroze 15 points 5 months ago

Eclipse

Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time.

Will probably need to check this out.

[–] paf0 13 points 5 months ago

Coming soon, everything is corrupt, I have to delete the .metadata dir regularly, but it's faster.

[–] suckmyspez 9 points 5 months ago (9 children)

Give zed.dev a try. I’ve been using it over vscode more and more. Lots faster too

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Their client is only on MacOS though.

[–] suckmyspez 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Although no official release is available yet, Linux is buildable from source…

https://zed.dev/docs/development/linux

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

From what I see on github, there are major issues for Linux.

I am already fighting poorly designed vendor tools, adding one more unstable software in my workflow is just more frustrations.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

It seems to be built on the same components as VScode and VScodium. Honestly, I don't see the point... yeah, sure, they want their editor to work on the web, but couldn't they have don't that with a GUI lib that compiles to WASM?

It feels like it's only for open source purists aka a minority.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] calcopiritus 14 points 5 months ago (4 children)

I feel like browser support is such a niche. I don't understand why many IDEs dedicate so many resources to make it work on the browser. There are already many options to code on the web if you need it.

[–] Swuden 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Pretty sure it’s to enable extensions written in JS. These apps build their success on a rich ecosystem of plugins. And, like it or not, JS plays a big part in that.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Chromebooks maybe?

I always figured the browser part mostly falls out of doing the Electron-for-cross-platform thing.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I agree, it seems to be built on the same components as VScode and VScodium. Honestly, I don't see the point... yeah, sure, they want their editor to work on the web, but couldn't they have don't that with a GUI lib that compiles to WASM?

Yeah I agree, it feels like it's only for open source purists aka a minority.

[–] barsquid 3 points 5 months ago

You have to follow the attribution and share-alike parts of the license. Otherwise you'll have the same consequences as an AI company would scraping it (still zero).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But how's the java support? If it's better than vs code then it might be worth something.

[–] Carighan 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This is their "light IDE" basically, the equivalent of VS Code. Their Java IDE is the full thing, well, Eclipse. Although I personally prefer IntelliJ IDEA.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Is anyone using Eclipse anymore? I’ve barely heard anything about it the past 10 years.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Had a coworker five years ago who wouldn’t let go of it. And he was really productive.

To my understanding, there are still some things it does better than IntelliJ, for instance being able to add all missing imports in one go instead of one by one.
I’ll admit though that this is a rather tiny advantage, and as I haven’t touched Java in quite a while, it may be even outdated.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

That’s good to hear. I haven’t touched Eclipse in maybe 15 years and back then it fueled me a burning hatred for IDEs. It felt like a huge confusing mess. But maybe it has become more streamlined lately.

Now I have grown out of my hatred and can’t imagine a day without (non Eclipse) IDEs.

[–] qaz 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I have used it about 3 years ago and it was still a confusing mess. I recommend sticking with IntelliJ for JVM development for now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

It's still a hot mess. Helped my wife set it up for developing a Java webapp with Tomcat and it's such a mess to set up, compared to IntelliJ that I could just set up a Springboot easily.

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[–] Hope 5 points 5 months ago

I have a coworker who swears by it, particularly for C development.

[–] Lorgres 4 points 5 months ago

A shocking amount of microcontroller manufacturers have eclipse based IDEs for their chips. Thought that seems to be going out of style, luckily.

[–] Treczoks 2 points 5 months ago

I'll wait and see if they manage to get embedded system debugging to work properly. What I've seen in the past has been a pain in the you-know-what in that regard, showing clearly that their main focus was PCs.

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