How does latest Eclipse compare to IntelliJ Idea 5.1?

[Cathy Chlevner]

Our company is considering a switch from our current Java IDE -IntelliJ Idea 5.1 to the latest available (3.3?) Eclipse release.

We're using SVN as source control -integrated with the IntelliJ and Jira for our bug tracking.

Best thing would be to just go ahead and try it , I guess, but we're trying to minimize waste of time - meaning setting up the whole thing in Eclipse just to find out there's some unsolvable issue there.

We've already compared the feature lists but would love to hear from people who have used (preferably) both IDEs or at least extensively used Eclipse in a commercial setting, as to pros/cons of such a move.

Thanks all !

[Cathy Chlevner]

Some more info:
We have a combined web+non-web Java application, which also includes JavaScript etc.
The unit testing framework is Junit 3.8

[Tim Holloway]

I have used both at the same time. That is, I had both Eclipse ".project" and ".classpath" and IntelliJ project/module/workspace files in the same project so that editing could be done with whichever IDE was handier at the moment. And I did my production builds using Ant on a non-GUI Solaris machine after developing in an IDE on Windows.

I can live comfortably with both IDEs, though I prefer Eclipse myself. IntelliJ I think is friendlier to line-level developers, but Eclipse has the ability for me to debug multiple cross-communicating apps with less button-pushing.

I've used Eclipse with SVN and CVS (in fact I have both types of project on the machine I'm typing this on). No problem. Well, not much. SVN is a little annoying sometimes. If I'm not mistaken, JIRA hooks into Mylyn.

Both Eclipse and IntelliJ support JUnit. I've found it easier to do JUnit under Eclipse, however. Then again, I'm a release behind on IntelliJ at the moment.