Let's rethink the Eclipse IDE!

The world of programming languages and technology stacks is becoming increasingly diverse. IDEs such as Eclipse have adapted to this complexity by continuously adding functionality and tooling support to cover as many use cases as possible. But this often happens at the expense of the user experience: Cluttered UIs, lengthy installing and configuration processes and poor responsiveness can be a real pain for developers.

With the Sandbox for Eclipse, a minimal, barebone version of Eclipse, we have taken a step back by stripping the Eclipse IDE down to essentials, inspired by text editors such as Atom or Visual Studio Code. The idea is to build a user-friendly, lightweight text editor on top of it. Missing features for decent text editing will be added step by step and based on your – the users’ – feedback. The Eclipse Sandbox is not only lightweight and fast to install, but it will put you back in the driver’s seat when it comes to deciding what functionality is really necessary.

So buckle your seatbelt, join us on this development journey – and help us rethink Eclipse! Download the Sandbox for Eclipse from GitHub as ZIP, or as a Profile and let us know how you use and extend it by leaving a comment underneath the Profile.

For more details, read the article on our blog.

• The Sandbox for Eclipse is based on the „Eclipse Platform IDE“, which is basically the core IDE of the Platform project. It doesn’t include JDT (Java tooling), CDT (C/C++ tooling) or the like.
• Why is there no spell checker? In Eclipse, this feature is traditionally provided by JDT and thus dependent on it. Since this barebone Eclipse version doesn’t include JDT, there is no spell checking available either.
• Before you can save a file in Eclipse, you need to create a project in your workspace.
• An easy way to install the Sandbox for Eclipse is via the following link: https://www.yatta.de/profiles/hub/sandbox-for-eclipse (pro-tip: this option will allow you to receive and easily apply updates for the Sandbox)
• Please note that we will regularly update the Profile and the GitHub project based on the changes we received.
• If you would like to upload your own Sandbox subproject for others to experiment with, you can do so by sending a pull request on GitHub or just forking and re-uploading the profile. This way, the community can see and review your changes.