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Handhelds Java Programming Hardware

Nokia to Become Involved in Eclipse Development 89

Posted by CowboyNeal from the hands-on dept.
jondaw writes "Builder UK says that Nokia is to become more involved in the direction of the Open Source IDE, Eclipse. 'Nokia has increased its level of involvement in the Eclipse project by becoming a board member and strategic developer. It will take the lead in developing tools for mobile applications based on the Eclipse platform. One if its aims will be to extend the Java-based IDE to have full support for J2ME.'"
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Nokia to Become Involved in Eclipse Development More

Nokia to Become Involved in Eclipse Development

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  • Amusing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 22, 2005 @06:05PM (#13625744)
    Between this and the last article, it begins to seem like IBM is doing more than Sun is to take the leadership position in Java lately.

    I wonder how Harmony is doing...

  • Great news... or is it? (Score:3, Informative)

    by mikaelhg ( 47691 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @06:06PM (#13625754)
    Having used Nokia's horrible, horrible developer tools, I sincerely wish that they will not contribute any code which in any way resembles the current quality of their tools.

    Of course, this could be a brand new opportunity for them to turn their sledge around, as they say in Finland.

    • Re:Great news... or is it? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 22, 2005 @06:38PM (#13625940)
      you don't say what the problem with their tools are. i developed applications for series 40 phones and everything they provided worked fine. documentation on the phones was good. emulator had no problems. i used netbeans and netbeans mobility, which i had no problem with (but isn't nokia's tool).

      i think if you look at some other phone maker's developers sites you'll be surprised that nokia is probably the best. a lot of other companies have very limited or poor documentation on the phones. i think nokia could make their instructions for getting started clearer. it's a little difficult to get started cause you may not know what all you need to download and how to setup your environment, but all the information is on their site.

      i think maybe you had problems with the ide you used and blame nokia. remember all the phone company needs to provide you with is the sdk, documentation, and emulator. there really isn't any other "tools" they provide.

      • Re:Great news... or is it? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @08:33PM (#13626443) Homepage Journal
        you've had the pleasure of only dealing with the j2me emulators, which are of ok quality and certainly of good quality when compared to most of the competition. the documentation isn't bad and it's easy enough to mess around. however, some of the emulators from them take ages to start up and are _heavy_(especially those based on the crap wins symbian 'emu' - that would be the s60 emus).

        but as a whole for example the symbian devkits are a horrible mess, bad documentation, unworking example code etc..

        some other pc apps from nokia aren't that hot either, often eating tens of megabytes memory for no apparent reason and yesterday installing pc suite fucked up some msxml dll on my laptop too(after getting the dll from web and regsvr32'ing it .net2003 started again, luckily).

        besides.. for eclipse, eclipseme [eclipseme.org] totally rocks and supports nokias emulators as well.

    • Can't speak about other areas, but with regards to Java Micro Edition, Nokia has the best tools/support out there. You should just see the kind of crap some other mobile phone manufacturers pass as "development tools". From my experience, SonyEricsson seems to be the worst...

      Back to the topic, I'm surprised Nokia didn't go with NetBeans, it has much better support for J2ME to start with. Note that I really don't know which IDE is better for general application development, but for J2ME NetBeans is (currentl
    • Having used Nokia's horrible, horrible developer tools, I sincerely wish that they will not contribute any code which in any way resembles the current quality of their tools.

      Perhaps this is why, about a year ago, they bought up Metrowerks' x86 dev tools?
  • I'm suprised none of the other Cell Phone providers are trying to invest money into easy Java Web Application development. Then again, maybe this is their way to find new employees?

  • ambitious... (Score:3, Funny)

    by moviepig.com ( 745183 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @06:09PM (#13625770)
    Nokia to Become Involved in Eclipse Development

    Next quarter, they'll expand into terra-forming...

  • IMHO, I don't think this means much. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mustang Matt ( 133426 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @06:22PM (#13625849)
    I think what this means is Nokia has been using eclipse for a while and they've noticed some ways to make it easier to develop for their phones so they're going to write some plugins and maybe do a small amount of core work.

    Eclipse really is an incredible java ide. I'd be thrilled to see someone extend it or create an IDE for PHP that was on the same level of quality as ecipse. (And no the 1-2 PHP plugins for Eclipse aren't even remotely in the same ball park.)

    I would go as far to say that Eclipse itself has been such a pleasure to work with that it's encouraged me to write more java. If you haven't checked it out, you're really missing out.

    • Re:IMHO, I don't think this means much. (Score:4, Informative)

      by LDoggg_ ( 659725 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @06:37PM (#13625934) Homepage
      What's wrong with phpeclipse [phpeclipse.de] ? It's based on the excellent eclipse webtools [eclipse.org] project.
      Seems to do everything I'd expect a PHP IDE to do.

      I've even used it on the natively compiled eclipse that comes with fedora core 4

      • It's missing a lot of the functionality that Eclipse has. Even simple things like dynamic variable highlighting. It's much too dependent upon xammp which I don't feel is necessary.

        I also get the feeling it's "pudgy" as it seems to slow the startup of eclipse by several seconds. It feels very "thrown together" for lack of a better phrase.

        I know I'm badmouthing it but I am glad it's out there and someone's working on it. Hopefully it will reach the quality level of eclipse soon.
      • I tried phpEclipse recently, coming from jEdit. It was almost nice, but missing lots of things. Like, columnar selection, a useful search/replace dialog, anywhere near good folding and it has serious problems with line numbering when word wrapping meaning that practically you couldn't enable word wrap at all if you wanted correct line numbers in the gutter. It also fell over when encountering recursive symlinks in the file system.

        I stuck with it for a week, but compared to jEdit, Eclipse, at least for PH
    • I've recently discovered the Trustudio [trustudio.org] platform. I don't really like programming in PHP, but it's great for Python. If the PHP support is anywhere near as good as the Python support, it should do whatever you need.
    • Look into Zend Studio [zend.com] java based IDE good tool to debug php scripts. Read the zend page for more details and if you really into php development you i think it might worth 100 bucks for you...

    • I think what this means is Nokia has been using eclipse for a while and they've noticed some ways to make it easier to develop for their phones so they're going to write some plugins and maybe do a small amount of core work.

      Yes, companies like Nokia just notice products are sort of suitable for them and then decide to dedicate money and personnel expanding it. Wrong answer. Real reason is of course that there is no money to be made in mobile development tools and no IDE company is going to put too much effo

  • Nokia should fix themselves first (Score:4, Informative)

    by The G ( 7787 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @06:22PM (#13625853)
    One if its aims will be to extend the Java-based IDE to have full support for J2ME.

    How about, instead of that, they try to make their own phones have full support for J2ME? Nokia wouldn't know a standard-compliant MIDP implementation if it bit them in the ass, and they actually charge you a couple hundred bucks to report bugs in their phones to anyone with a clue.

    I appreciate Eclipse, but none of my company's code can use it. Know why? Because of the huge piles of conditional compilation and build scripts that we need to build separate applications for each of Nokia's phones, because no two have the same set of gross standards-noncompliances; Nokia has done more than any company I know of to make "write once run anywhere" the joke that it is.

    Nokia should get their own house in order before they try to grub up open-source PR.

    • Re:Nokia should fix themselves first (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Oniros ( 53181 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @07:32PM (#13626199)
      Honnestly Nokia is not the only one with those issues, about every single vendor is non-compliant and require some workarounds for each handset.

      http://www.vortoj.com/sjpp/ [vortoj.com] comes in handy to have conditional code and still be able to use an IDE.

      It would be nice if the j2me emulators could run in the debugger consistently though. Maybe Nokia could help improve that.
    • maybe, just maybe, your "company" should learn how to write real code?!?... instead of blaming the IDE. If you, as a developer or manager, feel the need to rely on a single IDE to get stuff done... you're in the wrong business.
    • Funny, for the two years I've been working with J2ME, I've found Nokia's MIDP implementations to be the most compliant. Their phones are split into Series 30, 40, 60 and 80 devices (and a few editions), and each group has clearly defined capabilities.

      Have you worked with other manufacturers' phones? Don't tell me that Nokia has worse standards compliance than e.g. SonyEricsson P910i, which looks like its "Java support" was written by a stoned teenager over a weekend...

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @06:25PM (#13625870)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Hear that pounding? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by gooman ( 709147 )
    That's another nail in the coffin of Sun trying to control the future of Java.
    Come on you guys, open source Java already! With a real open source license this time please.
    Get on board and Java just might become more powerful than even you realized. Sure, you give up total control (so I guess it's just a matter of whats more important, seeing your technology succeed or maintaining control). Ignore reality and Sun Java will become irrelevant.

  • At William and Mary the CS department uses Eclipse. It's not a bad program but it's definately a little behind on Java standards.

  • Surprising (Score:3, Interesting)

    by oliderid ( 710055 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @08:17PM (#13626372) Journal
    For those involved in the mobile world. We had to quit the MIDP 2.0 market due to the severe limitations imposed by the myriad of constructors APIs. And even under the constructor umbrella you have to face different series with their own spec.

    J2ME is a doomed environment. They needed years to come with a basic standard like MIDP 2.0 . And Bluetooth and other mobile features aren't even part of it.

    It looks exactly like the micro computer market in the early 80's. And guess what...Who has the most "easy" environment for developers. Yes you name it. M***

    Well thx There are still Blackberry for Java coders like me.

  • Nokia... Please amend the last sentence to: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DA_MAN_DA_MYTH ( 182037 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @08:23PM (#13626397) Homepage Journal
    One if its aims will be to extend the Java-based IDE to have full support for J2ME on a Mac.
  • Absolutely great! I LOVE this program, and more involvement from anybody is a good thing!
    • picture this - there are lots of people, working on a project for free. Someone joins in. This person works hard, and constantly. Suddenly you realize that this person is getting PAID to do your hobby work. Personally, if such a situation were to happen to me, I'd lose all incentive to continue working on this project.

  • Eclipse has lots of companies on board (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    See the history of Eclipse foundation [eclipse.org] and the add-in providers list [eclipse.org] (which may be out of date; dunno).

    Eclipse is great. It comes with best-of-breed Java development tools (JDT) and you can get C/C++ tooling (CDT) and tooling for other languages, to add to it. There's also lots of plugins written by 3rd parties [eclipseplugincentral.com]. Much of the development work on Eclipse is done by IBM, but many other companies are involved. I believe QNX is heavily involved in the CDT project, for example. Anybody can write their own plug

  • J2ME (soon to have J22K then J2XP? ) (Score:3, Funny)

    by Old Wolf ( 56093 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @08:54PM (#13626527)
    Jave has a Millennium Edition now?

    Also, I wonder if they could contribute to Eclipse by making it faster. Eclipse runs like a dog on my 900MHz CPU , it's even slower than JBuilder (which is saying something). It doesn't have much more functionality than older IDEs which ran fine on a 100MHz CPU (it can put squiggles under spelling mistakes and it can make your code disappear under little arrows, but that's about it...)

    • Re:J2ME (soon to have J22K then J2XP? ) (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Jave has a Millennium Edition now?

      I hope you're trying to be funny. The M in J2ME stands for mobile.

      It doesn't have much more functionality than older IDEs which ran fine on a 100MHz CPU (it can put squiggles under spelling mistakes and it can make your code disappear under little arrows, but that's about it...)

      You obviously haven't spent the time to actually learn what functionality Eclipse provides. As for speed, Eclipse 3.1 for Linux ran perfectly fine on my AMD Duron 1GHz (before I upgraded). If you
    • Why don't you try NetBeans? I know most Eclipse users loathe NetBeans, but I use both and, frankly, NetBeans from version 4 on is faster than Eclipse in my machines (plus I hate its graphic designer, to tell the whole truth about it).
      • I'm not making any JavaBeans, and it isn't an internet application.. 0/2
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Netbeans.org doesn't actually say what NetBeans is, except that it's an IDE. Isn't it a reasonable guess that is for the Net and it uses Beans ? If not, then it's extremely poorly named.

            I noticed that NetBeans comes bundled with Eclipse. If it were 'yet another IDE', why would they bother making that bundle? Again it seems reasonable to expect that it does something that Eclipse doesn't.

            Even the Wiki for netbeans doesn't say anything other than "It is an open source IDE, see also Eclipse". So -- what's the
        • NetBeans is more than just about making beans and internet apps. You can use it for making stand alone J2SE apps and applets as well as enterprise apps.

          I use Websphere (an IBM Eclipse) at work, but on my PII at home I like Netbeans. It's a nice fully functional IDE. Its only limit is with the J2ME, I don't think it does that yet, but I haven't checked. For J2ME I like the Websphere Device Developer.

          I used to be a pure text based devoloper doing Java in Notepad because that is what was taught in school.
    • Eclipse runs fine on computers below 1 GHz *if* you give it enough memory to use. Eclipse is a parsing IDE (it parses everything you type) with many other advanced features (many more over .NET beta, which is only touching the surface of parsing editors). This is something entirely different than a simple spelling checker. Only the VE is a bit of a memory/CPU hog, but if you see how it works, this should not come as a surprise.

      Anyway, as a developer I urge you to use a more recent computer system. Advanced

  • Convertible (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @09:43PM (#13626693) Homepage Journal
    I'd love to see Nokia's contribution to Eclipse let me see when my Java project exceeds the J2ME distro libraries/APIs/boundaries. And automate refactoring code down to J2ME size. In other words, make J2ME a mode rather than a target platform. So I can just write Java applets and see when it won't "fit" on a mobile device, then "crop" it. Like trying to put a big image on a small canvas.
  • One of my projects is to create a Sudoko J2ME game for a Seris 40 Nokia.
    A nokia 40 phone has a perfect interface for sudoko.
    • Waaaaay ahead of you.

      Turns out to be a little more difficult than you might think to create 'pretty' SuDoku. A 'proper' SD is rotationally symmetric and should have 20-28 cells filled at the start. Mine are down to about 31 for asymmettric and 34 or so for symmettric. It is, shall we say, an 'interesting' problem.

      The difficulty of making a decent interface for the phone pales into insignificance.

      J.

  • Ooh. (Score:1, Troll)

    by ComputerSherpa ( 813913 )
    Nokia has progressed from making crappy phones to reorbiting moons. More exercises in shareholder value to come.

  • Bye bye "The Trouble with Open Source" (Score:3, Informative)

    by cheros ( 223479 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @01:53AM (#13627446)
    That puts a rather harsh spike through quite a few premises in that BCS piece "The trouble with Open Source". Not that it was brilliant to start with, but this is simply Yet Another Example Of A Company Deriving Value From Contributing To Open Source.

    I can't for a moment see Nokia (or Novell, or IBM, or CA or etc,etc,etc) contribute if they didn't think it would offer payback. They have shareholders too.

    There's an excellent piece in teh Harvard Business Review which compares events at Toyota with the Open Source movement in general and (amazingly) manages to draw large parallels. It's a very fascination article - I must see if I can somehow convince them of opening it up to a much wider audience.
  • Nokia are too late.
    Sony Ericsson J2ME SDK is already partly Eclipse-based.
  • This nice plugin just turned 1.1.0 and I can recommend it to all, EclipseME [eclipseme.org].

  • Why Eclipse (Score:2, Funny)

    by LoonyMike ( 917095 )
    Nokia's display technology doesn't perform very well under direct sunlight
  • Nokia's first goal is to get fanciful colored themes in place for Eclipse. I get sooo bored with blue that I'm looking forward for a bright yellow. I would feel so, so.. girly.

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