Eclipse Theia

Traditionally, software development has taken place on individual machines using desktop applications like the Eclipse IDE. With the rise of cloud and container technologies such as Kubernetes, the idea of coding in container workspaces, running in the cloud, has become more popular. Software development in the cloud

• relieves the individual engineer from maintaining and setting up projects locally,

• allows them to scale beyond the limits of their individual machines,

• simplifies sharing and collaboration,

• improves context switches (different projects, branches, etc.) through automation, and

• centralizes control and confidentiality of source code.

But for the time being there are still many good reasons to prefer a locally running desktop editor, some of which are:

• bad network connections,

• deeper integration with local operating system features, and

• the use of multiple different tools for different tasks (e.g. Git clients, editors, shells)

Today, every editor or IDE project either focusses on running in browsers (e.g. Eclipse Che’s IDE) or as a local desktop app (e.g. the classic Eclipse IDE). Technologies like Electron, however, allow to run the same code in the browser as well as in an integrated desktop app. Therefore, it is no longer a choice of either desktop or cloud IDE but both scenarios can be supported with a single tool.

Furthermore, since 2016 we have witnessed the rise of protocols such as the Language Server Protocol (LSP) and the Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP). They cleanly separate language specific logic that often needs to deal with internals of compilers and runtimes from the actual tool. Today we count over 50 language servers for different languages. Implementing support for such protocols within an IDE makes these assets immediately available.