I've been looking for a reasonably priced (or free) IDE for Linux that supports J2EE. It should automate the process of creating EJBs, Servlets, JSPs, etc.
I was impressed with what little I've seen of Borland's JBuilder, but choked on the price at nearly $3K. Their Enterprise Studio, fully loaded is over $5K. They must think we're all millionaires!
I've been reading about IBM's Eclipse project, so I visited their web site to download it. The first time I visited however, they didn't have anything to download and instead directed me to join their PartnerWorld for Developers to download WebSphere Studio Workbench (WSW). I balked at the license agreement the first time around, but eventually went back and downloaded it.
In the mean time, the Eclipse site made Release 1.0 available for download. I downloaded it, too, and installed it. The contents of the .zip files for Eclipse and WSW look very similar. Can anyone tell me the difference?
I've run Eclipse, but it appears very barebones. It insists on opening Netscape to browse its help documents (there doesn't appear to be a way to configure which browser it uses) and I have to kill and reopen Netscape for each new document. It doesn't appear to have any J2EE support.
Now I'm seeing reports of Websphere Studio Application Developers (WSAD). To get this one needs to register for yet another IBM group. I have registered, but have been thus far unable to find a way to download the Linux version. Maybe it's not ready yet. In any case it (and the Windows version) are labelled as Previews only and apparently IBM will charge for the final release. Is this correct?
Can anyone briefly outline for me the differences (i.e., functionality, features, price, etc.) between Eclipse, WSW, and WSAD?
[This message has been edited by Gregory Smith (edited November 13, 2001).]