Eclipse playground page - discuss a proposal for update and clarification

Hi, I have just installed the latest version of Eclipse (Juno) and the latest AVR-Eclipse plugin, then built with the latest Arduino 1.0.1 core libraries. I have noticed the instructions are a little out of date and are version specific.
http://arduino.cc/playground/Code/Eclipse
I propose to update the instructions and simplify them. I have performed some very simple tests on a Linux platform (LinuxMint <- Ubuntu <- Debian) including Serial.println. All working OK.

I would like to acknowledge everyone's contributions to date. Without all this support and knowledge I would not be in a position to undertake this.

The playground wiki has no discussion pages, unlike Wikipedia. So, I would like to use this forum thread for discussion if needed.

I'll kick off the discussion with; WHY?
Eclipse is the professional C/C++ developers' open-source platform of choice. It has an immense support from the likes of Google, IBM, Intel, Freescale, Ericsson, Red-Hat... see Organization Commit Activity on Eclipse CDT™ (C/C++ Development Tooling) | projects.eclipse.org

This set up for development is still needed and is very useful. The Aduino-Eclipse plugin by Jantje works well, but has shortcomings; it is based on a fork from an earlier version of AVR-Eclipse - there is no guarantee that updates to AVR-Eclipse will make it through to the Arduino-Eclipse plugin. Additionally, the two plugins do not work well together. I personally prefer AVR-Eclipse because it is intended to support the full range of Atmel 8-bit microprocessors, it therefore has a wider user base than Arduino and will have wider support and testing.

I intend to have only a single primary set up following well known professional "best practices". i.e. Plugins installed via update sites, libraries separated into their own projects, incremental builds, a method of testing and verifying the final configuration. I will attempt to remove any version references and/or dependencies, this will reduce the need for future maintenance - it will not eliminate changes, just reduce the need for them.

Well that's it for starters. Thanks. Rick.

It would be great if we found an easy to use but powerful open source alternative. Eclipse is a great candidate but always seems to be focused on the less Arduino side of things. Really great for real experts but can be difficult/cumbersome for others.

Questions...

Is this really Arduino or AVR?

Does your suggestion support multiple pde/ino files and handle the associated Arduino pre-processing?

Does it read the same configuration as the Arduino IDE to establish the locations of new board definitions, cores and variants or does this info have to be entered manually for each project/board that we create (or download from the web)

Can it, without modifications, work with all existing Arduino 1.x open source projects from the web?

What about user installed libraries in the sketch folder? Can it find them easily?

Thanks

Hi, currently you are correct. Eclipse, like C++ itself, it is capable of both simple tasks and also of solving the most complex and sophisticated of problems. Therefore, like Microsoft's Visual Studio, it also is capable, with a little additional effort, of solving all the issues you have documented.

I am working on updating the Eclipse with AVR-Eclipse plugin page, if you have input on this, I welcome your comments.

Thanks. Rick.

Hi Rick,

Interesting.

As you know the problem with Visual Studio Pro is that it's only free for the first 3 years and it is not open source. So it is very nice, easy to use and customize but will always be for a smaller community.

It would be really great to find a simple to install and well featured Eclipse system that we could all contribute to. I'll be watching with interest at both your solution and the Arduino Plugin for Eclipse

Best of luck, Tim