The Eclipse IDE as it is offered for download at eclipse.org has become quite large. Size in bytes is probably not the biggest issue, but I think some of the functionality showing up in the UI is unnecessary clutter for many purposes that Eclipse could be used for. One such purpose I’m personally interested in is game development on the Java Platform (using Scala, Java, or another JVM language).
Some Java game development tools are already being built as Eclipse plug-ins and most likely more will be in the future. But right now they must provide them as a plug-in for an existing Eclipse installation that has all the clutter or build a completely custom Eclipse-based application, possibly an RCP app that doesn’t even include the Java Tools. I think this shouldn’t have to be the case: users of Java game dev tools should be able to download a version of Eclipse that is freed (as much as possible) from the cruft that they will not need, and be able to install specific tools and engine specific libraries into that baseline game development environment.
So I’m thinking of creating a lighter distribution of Eclipse JDT + XML tools that removes rarely used features from the Eclipse for Java Developers distribution and is specifically geared towards game development rather than enterprise Java or application development. Perhaps this should also extend to C/C++, but I am not familiar with the CDT so I’m not considering that aspect right now.
This distribution shouldn’t come from eclipse.org of course, but rather from the open source game engine and tools developers. I am willing to work on such a project, as long as it provides actual value to game developers and doesn’t eat up too much of my time. The first version of it could be fairly basic, just a lighter distro of Eclipse. Later versions can start incorporating game dev specific tools and UI concepts. Is there anyone interested in contributing to such a project? Or using such a build of Eclipse? Please let me know.
The first step of the project should be to create a reduced version of Eclipse JDT + XML tools that is still updateable, so that game development plug-ins and plug-ins such as Scala IDE, M2Eclipse, Subclipse, EGit can be installed. I have done some initial experiments and found an approximate list of features that can be easily removed from Eclipse JDT. If you would be interested in using such a distribution, please comment what you would like to be kept:
- APT or Annotation Processing Tool support — I think this is very rarely used and just clutters the UI in some screens.
- Ant support — I think a lot of people would be against this, so it should probably stay
- CVS support — CVS should not be used by anyone for other than legacy reasons, now that we have Git, Mercurial, SVN etc. And I expect that games development will not involve much poking around in legacy repositories. I think most open source game tools use SVN (correct me if I’m wrong).
- Help — this is debatable, but I would remove it from the first version and decide later what to do with it
- Welcome screen — same as help, can be added back later if it’s found to have some use
- JUnit3 support — JUnit4 should be enough, I think
- Various internal tools and plug-ins, backwards compatibility stuff
I’m estimating that the size of this distro would be somewhere between 50-70 MB. The P2 update manager included in Eclipse will increase the size on disk though, because it may create a lot of meta data and caches. But disk space is relatively cheap, and I don’t think there’s a better update manager available. My main concern is removing UI clutter so that game dev tools that plug into it will have more UI space and better visibility. Compared to the Eclipse IDE for Java Developers distribution, which lists the following “features” (feature in Eclipse terms is a collection of plug-ins):
- org.eclipse.cvs
- org.eclipse.epp.usagedata.feature
- org.eclipse.equinox.p2.user.ui
- org.eclipse.help
- org.eclipse.jdt
- org.eclipse.mylyn.bugzilla_feature
- org.eclipse.mylyn.context_feature
- org.eclipse.mylyn.ide_feature
- org.eclipse.mylyn.java_feature
- org.eclipse.mylyn.wikitext_feature
- org.eclipse.mylyn_feature
- org.eclipse.platform
- org.eclipse.rcp
- org.eclipse.wst.xml_ui.feature
Only these would remain (and even those not in complete form):
- org.eclipse.equinox.p2.user.ui (this is the update manager)
- org.eclipse.jdt (custom lite version with APT and maybe a couple of more small things removed)
- org.eclipse.platform (custom, with various plug-ins removed)
- org.eclipse.rcp
- org.eclipse.wst.xml_ui.feature (possibly custom with a couple of plug-ins removed)
Later versions could add optional updates that bundle engine-specific tools and libraries, Scala, SVN, Mercurial, Git or Maven support etc.
What do you think? Is there need for such an Eclipse distribution? I’m especially interested of the opinion of Eclipse based game tool developers, if any of you happen to read this post. Would you contribute if someone does the initial work? Has someone already done something like this (not engine specific)?
Villane 