Which is the best RCP platform [closed]

Question

I am building a desktop application. Our analysis says it would be better built with a RCP. Should I use the eclipse or netbeans platform to build my application . Some of the factors to consider are

• Performance
• Look and Feel
• Popularity among target users (developers/testers)
• License (has to be some FOSS)

The application will be having things like text editor, grid views, block diagrams and graph visualizations.

I already have experience with netbeans development, but learning eclipse won't hurt. any other options would be welcome too.

Debi

Answer 1

I've used Eclipse to build an RCP text editors, multiple views and graph diagrams (lacking only the block diagrams you mention). The environment was pretty good as well as the support in the community for getting help (it was my first Eclipse RCP experience - nearly all my questions had been answered at one point or another in the eclipse forums. When not - I got great feedback.)

The platform was pretty lightweight and handled memory well generally speaking. Some problems that you might run into, you'll likely run into on any platform you choose.

Capreolate

Answer 2

I would look at Netbeans. Netbeans is based on Swing while Eclipse uses SWT. Sun has put a lot of effort into Netbeans over the past few years and it's quite good.

There are some tutorials on the Netbeans site for plugins and platform.

http://www.netbeans.org/kb/trails/platform.html

This of course is a bit of a religious question. You will find it debated repeatedly on the web. Here are a couple of interesting threads.

http://www.nabble.com/Choosing-Netbeans-platform-or-Eclipse-RCP-td16012394.html
http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t103146.html

Rowlett

Answer 3

My vote is for Netbeans. Many of its shortcomings have been corrected in the 5 and 6 releases. The community is smaller, but certainly just as helpful.

Another option is the Swing Application Framework (JSR-296) which provides a very lightweight framework for building Swing applications. It provides some of the basic plumbing such as an Application context to share data and basic status and worker components. It doesn't provide any complex components, so it may be too lightweight for what you need.

Singlet

Answer 4

I suggest using Eclipse RCP, as far as I can see, it has many useful aspects like action and command mechanism, Eclipse Forms, data binding, etc. You can use GEF and Zest for graph based visualization and visual editors. Also Window builder is a convenient choice for drag and drop ui creation. Also there are many sources for learning Eclipse4 RCP, vogella.de is a good starting point. cheers...

Consul

Answer 5

Do you have to choose only between Eclipse and Netbeans?

I heard Spring is good

Kayseri

Is it good for desktop applications too? – Debi

Answer 6

Eclipse RCP is powerfull. I have used it for one of my projects. Yes It has some bugs but it has lots of documents and it is faster than Netbeans RCP I think.

Kurtz

Answer 7

Eclipse has bugs especialy with the text editors. Netbeans on the other hand sucks RAM worse that Crysis

Tirado

OUch... That's a low blow! There have been computers that can run Netbeans for a few years--the same cannot be said for Crysis. Seriously, NB6 has gotten much better at memory management. The memory usage of the IDE is much greater than a typcial RCP app. :-) – Singlet