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Tag: Eclipse Foundation

Eclipse Foundation Delivers on Theia Promise

The Eclipse Foundation has made available Theia 1.0, an open source alternative to Microsoft’s Visual Studio (VS) Code tool for editing code.

Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, said Theia will provide IT teams with a no-cost option to editing code that can be deployed on-premises or on the cloud alongside the Eclipse integrated development environment. In contrast, VS Code today only runs on a desktop, he said.

While many developers still prefer to write code on their desktops, Milinkovich noted that more code is now being written in collaboration with other developers in the cloud. The pace at which that transition has been occurring is only likely to accelerate with more developers working from home as part of the effort to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, he added.

To provide access to a code editor in the cloud Theia runs in two separate frontend and backend processes that communicate via JSON-RPC messages over WebSockets or REST APIs over HTTP connections. Both processes expose a dependency injection (DI) container to which extensions can be made. Those extensions will also be available via the Eclipse Foundation marketplace, noted Milinkovich.

In fact, he said, the Eclipse Foundation expects more developers will be exposed to Theia first via third-party application development platforms. Early adopters and contributors to the Theia project include ARM, Arduino, Ericsson, Gitpod, Google Cloud, IBM, Red Hat, SAP and TypeFox. Microsoft, however, has thus far not expressed any interest in participating in the Theia project. In many cases, those vendors will be making Theia an extension of the DevOps environments that these vendors already provide as a cloud service, noted Millinkovich.

The future of writing code is clearly becoming more hybrid. Application developers will always want to be able to write code locally whenever inspiration strikes. What’s changing is the level of collaboration that is now possible thanks to the rise of the cloud. It’s become a lot easier for small teams of developers to edit code together, which in theory should lead to less debugging because better code is being created at the front end of the process. The degree to which that theory pans out naturally will vary based on the individual skills of any development team.

In the meantime, Millinkovich said the Eclipse Foundation remains committed to expanding the range of open source tools that can now be accessed via the cloud, including Che, an integrated development environment (IDE); CodeWind, a project that adds support for containers to IDEs based on Eclipse; Eclipse Dirigible, a cloud-based development platform developed by SAP; Eclipse Sprotty, a diagramming framework; and Eclipse Orion, a browser-based integration platform.

It may take a while for all these projects to reach the level of maturity required to drive mainstream adoption. However, as work on these projects continues, the number of open source application development tools heading into the cloud is only going to accelerate in the months ahead.

— Mike Vizard

March 31, 2020
Eclipse Foundation Looks to Create Cloud-Based IDE Standards

The Eclipse Foundation today announced the formation of a working group to create standards for cloud-based integrated development environments (IDEs) led by Broadcom, EclipseSource, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Red Hat, SAP, Software AG and Typefox.

Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, said the Eclipse Cloud Development Tools Working Group (ECD WG) will work to replicate the success the Eclipse Foundation had in establishing standards for desktop IDEs based on an Eclipse standard among a new generation of cloud-based IDEs.

There already are several cloud-based IDEs available. However, because each of those IDEs is based on a codebase that differs from the codebase used to create the Eclipse desktop IDE, there is no interoperability across cloud-based IDEs. Milinkovich said that makes collaboration between developers using different cloud-based IDEs all but impossible as currently there is simply too much differentiation among providers of cloud-based IDEs.

As standards for cloud-based IDEs emerge, the Eclipse Foundation also expects best DevOps practices revolving around the integration of cloud-based IDEs and continuous integration/continuous development tools to advance as well, Milinkovich added.

Collectively, the ECD WG will drive adoption and standards for cloud-based developer tools, including language support, extensions and developer workspace definition. To achieve that goal, the ECG WD will pull together oversight of several existing open source projects being spearheaded by the Eclipse Foundation, including Eclipse Theia, an IDE framework for building TypeScript applications; Eclipse CodeWind, a project that adds support for containers to IDEs based on Eclipse; Eclipse Dirigible, a cloud-based development platform developed by SAP; Eclipse Sprotty, a diagramming framework; and Eclipse Orion, a browser-based integration platform.

Milinkovich said via those efforts, the ECD WG hopes to accelerate the adoption of cloud integrated development environment (IDE) and container-based workspace management, including the recently launched Che 7 project that makes available a native instance of Eclipse to build Java applications for Kubernetes environments.

It may be a while before the ECD WG can create a set of standards for cloud-based IDEs that will have a material impact on application development. The Eclipse Foundation still has to bring numerous application development powerhouses on board for this project, including Microsoft and, once the acquisition of Pivotal Software is completed, VMware. However, organizations that are shifting development to the cloud at the very least can take comfort in the fact that there is now some level of commitment to creating interoperability standards that one day could increase overall developer productivity as more applications are built in the cloud.

In the meantime, it’s apparent the Eclipse Foundation is committed to remaining relevant in the age of the cloud by both fostering IDE interoperability and acting as the steward for Jakarta Enterprise Edition, the open source follow-on to Java. Of course, not every IDE may be employed to build applications using Java. But at the very least, many of the familiar interfaces and constructs developers know today on their desktops will be moving forward into the cloud.

— Mike Vizard

October 8, 2019
Eclipse Foundation Delivers on Jakarta EE Promise

The Eclipse Foundation today announced the general availability of Jakarta Enterprise Edition (EE) 8 Full Platform and Web Profile specifications and associated technology compatibility kits (TCKs).

Announced during the JakartaOne Livestream virtual conference, Jakarta EE 8 is the follow-on open source platform to JavaEE that provides a foundation for building cloud-native applications using a familiar Java construct.

Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, said the availability of Jakarta EE 8 represents a milestone in that it is the first official release of a full Jakarta platform since Oracle agreed to give up control of Java EE to the Eclipse Foundation.

Its specifications are fully compatible with Java EE 8 specifications and include the same application programming interfaces (APIs) and an instance of Javadoc using the same javax namespace. Its TCKs are based on, and fully compatible with, all Java EE 8 TCKs. Jakarta EE 8 will not require any changes to Java EE 8 applications or their use of javax APIs. The specifications were developed under the Jakarta EE Specification Process, which replaces the Java Community Process (JCP) for Java EE.

The Eclipse Foundation is announcing the certification of Eclipse GlassFish 5.1, an open source compatible implementation of the Jakarta EE 8 Platform. Eclipse GlassFish 5.1 is fully tested under the open source-licensed Jakarta EE 8 TCKs for the Full Platform and Web Profiles.

IBM today also announced that Open Liberty, an open source implementation of the WebSphere Liberty application server, has been fully certified as being compatible with Jakarta EE 8 profiles. All vendors in the Jakarta EE Working Group, including Fujitsu, IBM, Oracle, Payara, Red Hat and Tomitribe, have committed to certifying their Java EE 8-compatible implementations.

Milinkovich said Jakarta EE 8 should drive a wave of innovation as more than 10 million developers who already know Java employ the platform to build cloud-native microservices that can be deployed using containers on Kubernetes platforms. In fact, he said, the number of cloud-native applications based on microservices that will be built and deployed in the enterprise will soon accelerate. As that transition occurs, the number of organizations embracing best DevOps processes to manage those applications also should significantly increase because the rate at which Jakarta applications will be built will be faster than Java applications historically have been built.

Collectively, Milinkovic also noted that despite the rise of rival programming languages, these and other forthcoming efforts will drive a resurgence in interest in Java programming languages that will ensure Java’s continued dominance of enterprise IT environments for many years to come.

Of course, the primary reason IT vendors are excited is they no longer need to pay royalties to Oracle. It’s not clear how much of those savings might be passed on to IT organizations. What is apparent is that organizations that are required to employ open source technologies whenever possible are going to be a lot happier now that Jakarta EE 8 has finally arrived.

— Mike Vizard

September 10, 2019
Eclipse Foundation Charts Cloud-Native Path Forward for Jakarta

A new era begins for the Java community today with a commitment to a Jakarta EE specification that the Eclipse Foundation expects will become cloud-native in short order.

Jakarta EE formally marks the end of a Java era. While the term Java will still apply to any technologies developed prior to Oracle transferring stewardship of the venerable programming language to the Eclipse Foundation, all future innovations will be delivered under the Jakarta brand.

A survey of 1,800 Java developers shows that in addition to increasing the overall pace of innovation, the top two priorities of the developer community is to see more emphasis being placed on microservices and integration with the emerging de facto Kubernetes container orchestration platform.

A full 95 percent of the respondents building microservices said they are employing Java as part of those efforts, while nearly one-third of respondents are already working with Kubernetes. Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, said that although it’s yet to be determined precisely how Java and Kubernetes will be more tightly coupled, it’s clear the Jakarta community wants to be able to deploy cloud-native applications based on Jakarta. Half of survey respondents said they ran only one-fifth of their Java applications today in a cloud. But more than 30 percent said they expect to be running 60 percent of more of their applications in the cloud within the next two years.

Milinkovich said with Jakarta under the auspices of the Eclipse Foundation, many more developers from different vendors will be contributing code to advance it. Previous advances to Java have been slow in coming over the years because all contributions to the code base were controlled by Oracle. One of the first things to change under the stewardship of the Eclipse Foundation, he noted, is that Oracle has committed to open-sourcing the Test Compatibility Kits (TCKs), which vendors previously were required to license at significant expense.

Also expected to witness a faster innovation cycle, Milinkovich said, is Eclipse MicroProfile, a Java framework developed by IBM and Red Hat optimized for microservices, which the Eclipse Foundation expects to be as widely embraced as the Spring framework based on Java that Pivotal Software helped popularize. In fact, there will be a lot more cross-pollination of ideas and concepts across all the major frameworks from writing applications, he added.

Tighter integration between Jakarta and Kubernetes and a general simplification of the effort required to develop microservices is likely to have a significant impact on DevOps for years to come. Many organizations today are contemplating the degree to which they may want to lift-and-shift existing Java application into the cloud versus rewriting them completely in a new language. With the Eclipse Foundation’s commitment to a cloud-native implementation of Jakarta EE, it’s clear that organizations can have greater confidence that existing investments in Java applications likely will remain relevant in the age of the cloud. In fact, the only decision left for many of them to make is the degree to which they might want to turn monolithic applications written in Java into highly portable microservices based on Jakarta EE.

— Mike Vizard

April 24, 2018