BRUSSELS, Belgium – October 18, 2022 – The Eclipse Foundation, one of the world’s largest open source foundations, is celebrating the fifth anniversary of the creation of Eclipse Theia, with a new type of software release that augments the current monthly Theia updates. Known as the Theia Community release, this new cadence will integrate 3 months worth of Eclipse Theia updates in a single release. The one exception is the inaugural release that will include all of the major updates to Eclipse Theia for 2022.
Eclipse Theia is an open source platform for developing cloud & desktop IDEs and tools based on modern web technologies. Theia provides full flexibility for adopters in building their custom IDEs, domain-specific tools and entire white labeled solutions. At the same time, it is compatible with current de facto standards, such as the language server protocol (LSP), VS Code extensions, and even UI technologies such as React.
“Eclipse Theia is establishing itself as the next generation tooling and applications platform from the Eclipse Foundation. Theia has been a strong innovation driver since its inception 5 years ago,” says Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. “With the introduction of the community release, Theia continues to set the heart beat of the rapidly growing Eclipse Cloud DevTools ecosystem. Happy birthday to Eclipse Theia on its fifth anniversary!”
As noted earlier, to continuously enable leading edge and fast innovation to its adopters, Theia follows a monthly release cycle. In addition to this monthly release, as of September 2022, Theia will provide a Community Release every three months, which consolidates the development for adopters and integrating technologies. Our first Community Release will include even more of these innovations, including everything developed in 2022. Some of these features include:
- New Toolbar - The most user visible feature added to Theia in 2022 is the support for a configurable toolbar. The Theia toolbar comes with a lot of flexibility. As a tool creator, you can decide whether it is part of your tool or not and what it initially looks like. Users of your tool can adapt the toolbar, they can add, remove and rearrange items. It is even possible for users to select custom icons for actions.
- UX Refinements - A lot of work has been spent on innumerous UX improvements all across the Theia workbench. Examples are the improved support for multiple editors, the reorganization of menus and the improved tab rendering
- Memory and Disassembly Views - Since 1.28, Theia has provided a comprehensive disassembly view fueled by the debug adapter protocol (DAP)
- VS Code Extension Compatibility - One of the great things about Eclipse Theia is that it is capable of hosting VS Code extensions. As a creator of a tool or IDE based on Theia, you can make features provided as VS Code extensions part of your product, e.g. language servers
- Improvement for Adopters - An overhaul of documentation, a new test framework, and other improvements specifically for developers building new apps with Eclipse Theia
To learn more about the Eclipse Theia Community release, its core features and the technology, or to get involved with the Eclipse Theia Project and begin contributing, please visit https://theia-ide.org.
The TheiaCon 2022 Call for Presentations (CFP) is now open! We will be offering a broad range of opportunities to present and share all things Eclipse Theia at our second annual TheiaCon event to be held November 30 - December 1, 2022. This is a two-day virtual event. The program will include 25 minute presentations (including demos), expert panel discussions and five minute “lightning talks.” Please submit your talk proposal now!
A very good place to learn more about Theia will also be EclipseCon 2022, the program has a strong focus on Theia and other Eclipse Cloud Developer Tools technologies. So make sure you register soon! As part of EclipseCon, the Cloud DevTools Working Group will be sponsoring a Community Day event around Theia on Monday, October 24.
Quotes from Eclipse Theia Project Adopters and Contributors:
Arm
“Eclipse Theia allows tool builders to create a desktop and web-based IDE using the same codebase, which is a very important use case for many adopters,” said Rob Moran, director of Engineering, Online Tools at Arm. “The flexibility of the platform allows adding, adapting and even removing all sorts of features. I don’t believe it is currently possible to efficiently build a rich IDE for the web without using Theia. The community release will provide a good integration point between Theia, adjacent technologies and the community of adopters.”
EclipseSource
“For our customer base, Theia addresses the need for a flexible platform to build modern tools and IDEs in a unique way,” said Dr. Jonas Helming, principal software architect and CEO. “We, therefore, observe a continuously growing number of commercial adopters. The introduction of the Theia Community Release harmonizes the adoption process of participating stakeholders, including adopters, third party technologies such as Eclipse GLSP or EMF.cloud and, of course, the Theia project team.”
Ericsson
“Due to its flexibility and surrounding ecosystem, Eclipse Theia is heavily used as a platform for building custom tools in the embedded domain. The openness of the project in all its facets is a key requirement for the adoption in the context of building internal developer tools. This includes an open development process, “no” telemetry and a transparent supply chain. We expect that the community release will create significant synergies in this important area.” Matthew Kouzam, Ericsson
logi.cals GmbH
“Theia’s integrability with external services, its commercial-friendly openness, and its ability to be deeply adapted to requirements of domain-specific user flows makes it a truly distinctive platform for new tools, as well as for evolving rich client tools to a modern, cloud-enabled technology stack,” said Heinrcih Steininger, CTO, logi.cals GmbH. “A key enabler in this regard is also its vibrant ecosystem, such as Eclipse GLSP for domain-specific graphical editors, Theia’s Playwright-based end-to-end testing library, Theia.cloud for a lean hosting solution, and much more. The new community release of Theia now nurtures the alignment of releases across Theia, its ecosystem and custom extensions, which in turn will simplify the maintenance and quality assurance of Theia-based products.”
TypeFox
“The flexible architecture of the Theia platform allows adopters to control every visual and behavioral aspect of their custom tool offering,” said Miro Spönemann, principal software architect and CEO, Typefox. “Tools such as the new generation of the Arduino IDE are almost impossible to create with other off-the-shelf solutions. We adopt Theia as a basis of several custom IDE solutions. We expect the community release to ease the long term maintenance of these adopter projects.”
About the Eclipse Foundation
The Eclipse Foundation provides our global community of individuals and organizations with a mature, scalable, and business-friendly environment for open source software collaboration and innovation. The Foundation is home to the Eclipse IDE, Jakarta EE, and over 400 open source projects, including runtimes, tools, and frameworks for cloud and edge applications, IoT, AI, automotive, systems engineering, distributed ledger technologies, open processor designs, and many others. The Eclipse Foundation is an international non-profit association supported by over 330 members, including industry leaders who value open source as a key enabler for their business strategies. To learn more, follow us on Twitter @EclipseFdn, LinkedIn or visit eclipse.org.
Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
###
Media contacts:
Schwartz Public Relations for the Eclipse Foundation, AISBL
Julia Rauch / Sophie Dechansreiter / Tobias Weiß
Sendlinger Straße 42A
80331 Munich
EclipseFoundation@schwartzpr.de
+49 (89) 211 871 – 43 / -35 / -70
Nichols Communications for the Eclipse Foundation, AISBL
Jay Nichols
jay@nicholscomm.com
+1 408-772-1551