Eclipse SDK 4.16M1

Eclipse means a lot of various things to diverse people. To some Eclipse is a free to use, modern Java development environment. To others, Eclipse is a malleable environment to test with new PC languages or extensions to actual languages. To yet others, Eclipse is a complete framework that deploys many complex and modern software design and execution techniques.

Eclipse is open because its design permits for simple extension by third parties. It is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) because it offers tooling to administrate workspaces; to create, launch and debug programs; to share artifacts with a team and to version code; and to simply customize the programming experiment. Eclipse works like a platform because it is not a finished program per se but is developed to be expanded indefinitely with more and more complex tooling. The platform has no implicit or explicit support whatsoever for Java growth as offered by the Java development applications (JDT).

Speaking more technically, the platform is developed on a mechanism for integrating, discovering, and using modules named plug-ins. A contributor to Eclipse offers as one or more plug-ins an offering that demonstrates itself with a product-particular user interface (UI) in the workbench.