LiClipse 3.0.3 (providing back to Open Source: multiple languages/TextMate bundles in Eclipse).

LiClipse 3.0.3 is now released... The main things on LiClipse itself is that the base platform was upgraded to Eclipse 4.6 RC1 and EGit was upgraded (it had a critical issue in the Git Staging View).

Now, what I really wanted to talk about is that with this release, the LiClipse editor component was open sourced!

The editor component in this case is the component which allows LiClipse to support multiple languages out of the box (either through its own language or through the TextMate grammar).

So, the features which are now available as Open Source (EPL) are:

• Syntax Highlighting (LiClipse, TextMate or SublimeText based).
• Code completion.
• Outline view and Quick Outline.
• Text-based mark occurrences.
• LiClipse Languages view:
• Enables exploring installed languages.
• LiClipse Partitions view:
• Enables inspecting the partitioning of the editor.
• Useful to debug how LiClipseText is parsing a language.
• Use LiClipseText as a base for other editors:
• Languages may be created and experimented with on-the-fly, without restarting Eclipse.

The home page with more details on the project is: http://liclipse.com/text.

So, what does this mean for LiClipse itself and its current users?

First, LiClipse (the commercial counterpart) still exists and provides advanced features not in LiClipseText:

• Bundling of LiClipseText (along with PyDev, EGit, ColorTheme, AnyEdit and StartExplorer) as a standalone with native installers.
• Enhancements to the theming (allowing theming of the IDE along with the editor and a nice dark theme).
• Multiple cursors.
• Linting for JavaScript, XML and HTML editors.
• Code formatting for HTML, XML.
• Vertical Indent Guides.
• Improved text search capabilities (with Lucene index-based searching, support for external folders, open editors and additional filtering on results page).
• HTML preview for the RST, Markdown and HTML editors.
• Debugging of Django Templates in PyDev.
• Launching of files opened with LiClipseText.

My hope is that users that can will still upgrade to it (to get the advanced features and to help in keeping the LiClipseText and PyDev development going on) or will donate to keep its development going forward...

And the main benefit here (both for existing users or new users) is that the LiClipse editor (LiClipseText) being EPL makes it hackable by anyone ;)

LiClipse 3.0.1: Java 8 now required (JSHint and Beautify.js using Nashorn JavaScript engine)

LiClipse 3.0.1 is now available for download.

There are 2 major changes in this release: it's now based on Eclipse 4.6 M7 and requires Java 8 to run.

I find Eclipse 4.6 M7 a big improvement over 4.5 already (for me, the major improvements are that the default dark theme improved and it's speedier, but there are many other improvements -- you can see those starting at https://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/news/4.6/M7 -- and going back up to M1).

The Java 8 requirement also brought a nice improvement for running JSHint: the Nashorn JavaScript engine which is now used to run it (it's much faster than Rhino, so, big JavaScript documents should no longer make LiClipse stall due to the JSHint code-analysis) -- unfortunately it's not currently officially supported (https://github.com/jshint/jshint/issues/2730), so, a modified version was used to run in it in LiClipse.

This release also removed the builtin support for the trees/tables custom scrollbars (I hope to restore that later on... still, currently, it's possible to restore it's behavior by installing the Xiliary plugin from http://fappel.github.io/xiliary/clean-sheet.html and enabling the related setting at at General > Appearance > Color Theme).

Also, EGit (which now handles pre-commit hooks properly) and PyDev (which now keeps the state of the PyUnit view across restarts) were updated.

As a note, users which have a license for LiClipse 2.x need to renew the license to use LiClipse 3.x (users that bought it within the last month are eligible for a free upgrade).