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Brian Fernandes
Director of Customer Engagement - Loves technology and almost everything related to computing. Wants to help you write better software. Follow at @brianfernandes.
Posted on Mar 15th 2018

UPDATE: MyEclipse 2018 is here!  Read all about it.

MyEclipse 2017 was first released in January 2017, and its most recent release, 2017 CI 10, was in December 2017. We will probably have a couple additional 2017 releases to round off that stream as well … so where’s MyEclipse 2018?

The short answer – MyEclipse 2018 is coming in July, with one game-changing addition, CodeMix! What else is included in this version? Why is CodeMix so cool, and can I already use it in MyEclipse 2017? (Yes, you can!) Read on for more details.

MyEclipse 2017 – Where We are Now

We introduced Angular and TypeScript tooling in MyEclipse 2017, last year. What was our long-term plan? Clearly, as our customers started to build more of their front ends with newer web technologies like Angular and React, we had to provide robust support for these technologies in the IDE. We planned to soon add capabilities that would help them to easily connect their brand new front ends, to their tried and tested backend systems.

Relative to the enterprise Java space, the modern web moves at near light speed. There would be a new release of Java EE (yes, we know, we should be saying Jakarta EE) every four years, but in that many weeks, you’d get new releases of Angular with significant changes and new features, intermixed with new versions of TypeScript and associated frameworks like TSLint. In six months, you’d get a new major release of Angular. While we did (and still do), deliver best-in-class support for Angular development in Eclipse, we are always playing catch-up; we found ourselves spending an unbalanced amount of time on modern web technologies, sometimes starving the Java EE work we hoped to do.

Enter CodeMix

CodeMix is an Eclipse plugin that gives you access to VS Code and its extensions, directly from Eclipse. Well, great … how does this help the MyEclipse user?

  • Out of the box, VS Code provides better support for languages like TypeScript & PHP.
  • The extension ecosystem of VS Code dwarfs that of Eclipse – the former has over 7000 extensions, adding support for a truly massive range of languages, frameworks, and tools.
  • Some vendors are producing extensions exclusively for VS Code:
     • Salesforce recently announced that their VS Code extensions are the future, Eclipse plug-ins would eventually be deprecated.
     • The Angular Team produces the Angular Language Service extension.   
    You wouldn’t need to switch your IDE to get access to these high quality tools.

The biggest win would be that our customers get access to a superlative level of language and framework support in areas where Eclipse typically performs poorly, but they can continue to use an IDE that is better for enterprise development, one they are proficient with.

Furthermore, we get to spend time on creating the cool new tech we talked about earlier, and work at a higher level to develop even better features, as opposed to playing catch-up.

For more on why we’re working on CodeMix, do read CodeMix – A Genesis.

MyEclipse 2018

All right, with the background out of the way, time for some key technical details on what’s coming in this version.

Photon

Given when MyEclipse 2018 will land, it makes no sense to base MyEclipse on the current Oxygen stream. Furthermore, Eclipse is moving from a yearly simultaneous release cycle, to a 13-week cycle post Photon. We’ll be sure to stay on top of these releases.

 

CodeMix

2018 will include CodeMix for that singular development experience we talked about. Want more specifics? We’re talking about better support for the most recent versions of both languages and frameworks, like TypeScript, PHP, Python, Angular, Vue, React, Node, etc.

Superior IntelliSense, validation, better code navigation, a super-efficient Command Palette, and a Debugger that can take on just about anything under the sun, are new capabilities you can get used to having at your fingertips.

And no, you won’t have to pay more for it, it’s covered under your MyEclipse license. For other questions you may have on MyEclipse and CodeMix, please see these FAQ.

Java 9 / Java 10 (Java 18.3)

From modules in Java 9, to the new collections API in Java 10, we’ll support these versions of Java out of the box.

Java EE 8 / Jakarta EE 8

It’s been some time since we updated our internal enterprise Java support – while this might not make the very first release of 2018, but we’ll work towards adding support for the most recent versions of the popular technologies in this version of the specification.

 

Other Updates

Spring, along with better support for Spring Boot, Maven, Hibernate, etc., are technologies we will refresh support for in MyEclipse 2018.

In Closing

Is there something we missed? Something you’d really like to see in MyEclipse 2018? Tell us on twitter @Genuitec or on our forums.

If you’re excited about CodeMix, and can’t wait to give it a try already, sign up to our insiders program for more details – a sneak peek release is due by the end of this month.