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But it gets really interesting when we start to use conditional
breakpoints. Want a breakpoint in a loop that
activates on the seventh iteration? Not a Problem! Or
only when a variable has a predetermined value? That
is also possible.
Cooperation with version control
Programmers who work on projects with other developers
generally make use of some form of version control
system. The option of storing the different source code
versions at a central location is then essential. The system
that is used most frequently for this is the so-called
Concurrent Versions System, better known as CVS. This
is supported natively by Eclipse; there is a special perspective
for the management of CVS-repositories. In
addition to the usual checking out and synchronising of
projects, this perspective is also used to manage tags
and branches. Using an external diff-application is
redundant, because this functionality is also built into
Eclipse, just as there is also a view to display the
resource history of a file. The management of tags and
branches is child’s play.
Figure 4.
Just on the plug-in
website of Eclipse alone
we can find nearly
1000 plug-ins.
Plug-ins for additional functionality
As was already mentioned earlier, the functionality of
Eclipse can be enhanced with plug-ins. There is a large
selection of plug-ins available and these can be roughly
divided into two categories. The first category comprises
a relatively small number of plug-ins developed
under the banner of the Eclipse organisation. In this category
belong, among others, the C/C++ and Visual
Editor plug-ins, which will be discussed a little further
on. These can be found at www.eclipe.org/tools. The
second category is much larger and contains all the
third-party plug-ins. Many of these plug-ins are able to
keep themselves up-to-date with the aid of the built-in
update-manager of Eclipse.
C for yourself
An IDE only becomes really interesting to developers
when it is able to handle multiple programming languages
without loosing much of the functionality. That is
why within the Eclipse Foundation the CDT project
(C/C++ Development Tools) has sprung into life (you can
find details at www.eclipse.org/cdt). As the name
implies, this plug-in changes Eclipse into a development
environment that knows how to deal with C and C++
code. This means that once again we can make use of
the functionality of CVS, the debugger, auto completion,
etc. In contrast to developing in Java, this plug-in does
not provide a built-in compiler. This is of course a little bit
more complicated with C and C++ considering the
strong platform dependency. If you work in Linux, then
there will almost never be a problem. Just about every
distribution contains a version of GCC (GNU C compiler),
which can be used by Eclipse without any trouble.
Via CygWin (http://cygwin.com), GCC together with a
selection of other Linux-features can be used in Windows.
If you’re not that keen on all that Linux-functionality, then
MinGW (www.mingw.org) may be a good alternative.
User Interface). Of course, you could do this in the same
way as any other programming task: enter all the code
yourself and frequently check the result by running the
application. But particularly when implementing graphical
elements the so-called ‘What you see is what you get’-
method (or: WYSIWYG) is quickly becoming popular.
This approach makes it possible to assemble the GUI in a
graphical interface, while at the same time the corresponding
source code is generated in the background. In
Eclipse this functionality is contained in the plug-in called
Visual Editor (VE) (see www.eclipse.org/vep).
Finally
As you have seen, it is possible to use Eclipse for a wide
range of tasks and programming languages. And we
didn’t even mention COBOL, PHP, designing with
UML/UML2 or database development. All these projects
are free and are continuously being developed further. In
this way there is practically always a configuration of
Eclipse available that meets your requirements. And in
the unlikely event that this is not the case, you can always
just develop a plug-in yourself.
(060018-1)
User-interface illustrated with the Visual Editor
If you build many applications in Java, you will then also
regularly have to design and implement a GUI (Graphical
Figure 5.
The compiler settings
are very extensive.
10/2006 - elektor electronics 69