Update: this is currently tested for Eclipse Juno, although I hope to update this for Kepler in the near future.

I’ve been making more use of Eclipse recently as an IDE. I’ve been using Aptana (which is based on Eclipse) for a few years now, but I’m spending less time coding in PHP so it now makes sense to graduate onto the bigger tool, especially as not all Eclipse plugins play nicely with Aptana. One of the most exciting features of Eclipse is the plugin ecosystem. Eclipse has been around for ages, and there are plenty of fantastic plugins adding additional programming languages and features. Here’s a list of some I’ve found useful:

AWS Toolkit

Would you like to manage your Amazon Web Services resources directly while writing code? This sounds a little excessive, but is actually quite useful: Amazon’s management console is slow and will only show lists a few items at a time. This plugin makes it easy to find particular details quickly among a huge lists of items, and also comes with syntax highlighting for CloudFormation templates. It’s not entirely supported on the latest version of Eclipse (Juno), but the parts I need all work well.

• Update site: http://aws.amazon.com/eclipse
• Documentation: http://aws.amazon.com/eclipse/
• Tick:
  • Amazon EC2 Management
  • AWS CloudFormation Tools
  • AWS Toolkit for Eclipse Core

EclipseFP

Haskell support for Eclipse, including syntax highlighting and direct support for loads of Haskell tools and frameworks directly (cabal, Hoogle, HLint, HTF, Alex, Happy, UUAGC, Snap, Yesod, …). You can run code directly from the IDE, calling out to GHCi.

• Update site: http://eclipsefp.sf.net/updates
• Documentation: http://eclipsefp.github.io/
• Tick:
  • FP: Haskell support for Eclipse

Geppetto

Puppet is a great way to automate the configuration of new servers. Geppetto (the puppet maker) is an IDE for this: providing syntax highlighting and integration with the Puppet forge.

• Update site: http://download.cloudsmith.com/geppetto/updates
• Documentation: http://cloudsmith.github.io/geppetto/
• Tick:
  • Geppetto

Json Tools

Support for JSON.

• Update site:
• Documentation:
• Tick:
  • Json Tools

Juno Updates

Eclipse provides much of its core functionality via plugins, and there’s plenty available to extend the default configuration.

• Update site: http://download.eclipse.org/releases/juno/
• Documentation: http://www.eclipse.org/
• Tick:
  • C/C++ Development Tools
  • Eclipse Web Developer Tools
  • Eclipse XML Editors and Tools
  • Eclipse XSL Developer Tools
  • JavaScript Development Tools
  • PHP Development Tools (PDT)
  • Subversive SVN Team Provider [Subversion integration]
  • Web Page Editor
  • … anything else you fancy!

Markdown Editor

Simple syntax highlighting and document outline for Markdown.

• Update site: http://www.winterwell.com/software/updatesite/
• Documentation: http://www.winterwell.com/software/markdown-editor.php
• Tick:
  • Markdown Editor

PyDev

An IDE for Python.

• Update site: http://pydev.org/updates
• Documentation: http://pydev.org/manual.html
• Tick:
  • PyDev for Eclipse

ReST Editor

As advertised last post, syntax highlighting makes editing ReStructured Text a lot easier…

• Update site: http://resteditor.sourceforge.net/eclipse
• Documentation: http://resteditor.sourceforge.net/
• Tick:
  • ReST Editor

ShellEd

BASH syntax highlighting.

• Update site: https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/shelled/shelled/ShellEd%202.0.2/update
• Documentation: http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/shelled/wiki/Documentation/InstallGuide
• Tick:
  • Shelled

TeXlipse

Support for LaTeX.

• Update site: http://texlipse.sourceforge.net
• Documentation: http://texlipse.sourceforge.net/
• Tick:
  • TeXlipse

I hope to update this list as I discover new plugins: feel free to add suggestions in the comments.