Eclipse Orion | Hacker News Reader

Eclipse Orion

eclipse.org

125 pointsd_c33 comments

Nice that they're trying, but it doesn't do even the basic stuff that the last crop of in-browser IDEs did.

  - open the page
  - click to the end of line 15 (inside the try, before the return)
  - hit ENTER

  Expected: caret goes to the same indent level as previous line
  Actual: caret goes to position zero


  - type "obj"
  - hit CTRL+SPACE

  Expected: At least be able to autocomplete symbols from the previous line.
  Actual: Renders a SPACE

In its current form, it's pretty much a TEXTAREA with syntax highlighting. To me, that says they released this to the public way too early. I think I'll check back in next year.

As far as I can see, the project is currently in early incubation phase, so no, it should definitely not be considered ready for actual development. They even say so themselves in the FAQ: http://wiki.eclipse.org/Orion/FAQ#Can_Orion_be_used_for_real...

http://wiki.eclipse.org/Orion/Getting_Started_with_Orion#CSS... shows autocomplete working (for CSS).

I'm not sure why it isn't turned on for the demo though.

Yep. No "auto-tab" as such in Safari, Firefox or Chrome on mac. However the video does show that the feature is there. At the moment it's essentially ms notepad with highlighting. However I've always wanted a development environment in my browser...so keep up the good work :)

Rather than copying each feature of an IDE, I would they rather spend the time in focusing on what developers can benefit from in such a new architecture.

For example, rather than autocomplete, I would rather see support for codereview capabilities and being truly inside a server allows significantly improved team capabilities (think Microsoft Office vs Google Docs).

tl;dr of 10 minutes video:

- All code uploaded to their orion servers

- Import of .zip files

- git commit and diff functionality

- Try your code with by running webserver username.orion.eclipse.org

- Syntax highlighting (at least for js)

- Use of JSLint for syntax navigation and error notification

- Keyboard bindings as you know them from desktop applications

- Handles huge files without any noticable delay (40000 lines+)

Oh and as I understood it, it is a beta and some functionality are not fully implemented, like the .git support.

Personally I believe some things are better of being a desktop application - and do not like the trend with _everything_ on the web, but the project itself is a cool idea and great implementation.

>Personally I believe some things are better of being a desktop application

Pretty much this. Yes, this is interesting, and I'm sure it will garnish a nice user base. But I won't be one of them. There's nothing shown that makes me want to deviate from Vim + plugins to this.

Thanks for the summary.

> - All code uploaded to their orion servers

Wow, this just isn't for me or almost any code I've worked on.

I'd like to know for whom this would be comfortable other than using pure-OSS projects.

You can setup your own Orion server, if privacy is your concern: http://wiki.eclipse.org/Orion/How_Tos/Install_Orion_on_Local...

From the Eclipse wiki: "Orion's objective is to create a browser-based open tool integration platform which is entirely focused on developing for the web, in the web. Tools are written in JavaScript and run in the browser. Unlike other attempts at creating browser-based development tools, this is not an IDE running in a single tab. Links work and can be shared. You can open a file in a new tab. Great care has been taken to provide a web experience for development."

So, to spare me finding headphones and watching 10 minutes of video, is this meant to be more than a syntax-highlighting text box without a right-click context menu? (FF 4.01)

Cloud9/Ace/SkyWriter/Whatever-it's-called-today seems like a much better implementation of this.

Maybe right now, but it's very early in the web-based IDE game to write anyone off.

The idea is pretty interesting and I'm going to keep an eye on how this develops.

Moving an entire IDE online is a pretty huge task but there are some features that simply make more sense online. I personally would love to see some kind of active collaboration so that you can share code with someone who isn't in office with you. I'm thinking Google Docs style where it shows you where they are in the file and the changes they make as they make them.

The git support alone makes this a pretty useful tool for on the go development.

it's kinda neat..undo doesn't work (in chrome w/mac anyways). Can someone enlighten me with some practical purposes for these sorta things? My imagination isn't working.

So you're visiting your parents for Thanksgiving, and you get a call "LATCH! there's some issue with the thingamajig that we deployed before you left, urgent fixed required or the universe will ... be okay really; but could you please look into this ? I'll make it worth your while."

The only tool you have at your disposal is your mom's ChromeBox, since you decided to "disconnect" for the holidays.

But no fear ! You log in to a familiar, already configured Orion workspace, debug the shiznit out of the issue, save the day and have well deserved turkey-fueled nap ..

Why would you not just remote desktop to your development machine where you have your entire working environment available anyway?

Because there was a power cut and your development machine isn't online, or the cleaner pulled the plug on it or maybe the sysadmins decided to change the network settings over the holidays.

The fact that you're making stretches to this situation to stress it's usefulness is not helping anything at all.

Keeping your development machine powered off over the holidays is not really a stretch. Why waste so much power ?

>or the cleaner pulled the plug on it

I was replying to the previous comment, trying to say that you can't always guarantee that a remote machine will be available. There are more benefits than just having your development environment always available though, like not needing to install or set up anything when moving between machines, or being able to extend your development environment using the same language that you are developing in.

you decided to "disconnect" for the holidays.

But no fear ! You log in to a familiar, already configured Orion workspace

Anyone else see the contradiction?

If you need to disturb people's holidays to have them firefight software problems, the manager manager needs to be fired for allowing such a knowledge bottleneck to form.

Think of it as Google Docs for web development. Always available and you can collaborate on it with anyone without them having to set up a development environment or install anything.

Gah, looking at the sample code. Can't resize the text area(unless I missed something), having to scroll horizontally to read code is a pain in the ass. I'll take 80 character lines any day(I assume that don't do that in the java world?)

Is Orion a new e5? What happened with e4? What the rest of Eclipse Foundation and Eclipse Projects think about it?

No, Orion is not e5, as far as I can see it's a set of browser-based tools for developing web apps. E4, by the way, is alive and well, it's release schedule is aligned with Indigo's. So, you can download the latest build (it's a RC1), and the final release should be in June.

It reminds me of Zope 2

What a crappy project, how about some better C++ support?!

The name OrionHub makes me wish that open-source companies were more litigious, just so that we could have some variety in naming.

Until they add Java support they shouldn't even be using the Eclipse name.

I know Eclipse supports other languages, but essentially Eclipse is the biggest Java IDE so announcing this web editor but avoiding Java support feels like they just picked the most easy thing to show off.

Syntax highlighting is easy. What I want is a Java editor with code completion, code folding and error highlighting/error stripe. Otherwise we might just use Emacs over NaCl.

how quickly the world owes you something...

It's not about showing off, it's about releasing early and getting some users to start a feedback cycle. To berate them over using the eclipse name because it's not what "you" want is just petty.

The idea of a web IDE is still a new concept. And maybe some things aren't meant for the cloud. It's awesome that these guys are experimenting with the notion. How can you expect them to just release a finished (open source) product out of the blue?

It seems that you're forgetting that Eclipse is not an IDE. It's a foundation. A foundation, similar in some ways to Apache, that owns many different projects. One of them is the Eclipse IDE. The other is Orion. Now tell me, why shouldn't a foundation named "Eclipse" be using the word "Eclipse" in one of it's own projects?

Edit: To be perfectly fair, Eclipse foundation is itself guilty for this confusion, because if you go to the "downloads" page on their site, you only see downloads for Eclipse IDE. You need to go to the "projects" page to see or download any other project.

from the getting started guide:

Java syntax highlighting is also supported. However, we have not implemented any outlining or content assist. Since we are building an integrated web-based toolset, we felt it important to target first the web client languages such as JavaScript, CSS, and HTML, so we can attract members of the JS community to Eclipse. Since we are self hosting Orion development in Orion, we need the JS features first.

http://wiki.eclipse.org/Orion/Getting_Started_with_Orion#Jav...

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