Eclipse Che Conferences/Talks/Demos, 21 Oct 2020

Previous Meeting Next Meeting

⏯

youtube image

►

From YouTube: Eclipse Theia vs Che vs VS Code

Description

Do you wonder whether you should use VS Code or Eclipse Theia? Are you confused by the relationship between Theia and Eclipse Che? Do you want to know how Che compares to VS Code Codespaces? Then join this talk where we will provide a comprehensive overview as well as a detailed comparison!

VS Code, Eclipse Theia and Eclipse Che are probably the most interesting projects to watch at the moment in the area of online IDEs and cloud development tools. However, there is quite some confusion going on about how these projects are related to each other and what sets them apart. This is especially true as the projects are heavily overlap in terms of features and even partially include and reuse each other.

In this talk, we provide a structured overview of Eclipse Theia, Eclipse Che and VS Code (including Codespaces). We focus on the use case of choosing a technology as a basis and platform for the implementation of custom tools, but also cover the plain off-the-shelf Cloud IDE use case.

We divide the projects into comparable pieces, highlight in which aspects they are unique, and answer typical questions including:

- What are the core goals and objectives of Che, Theia and VS Code (including Codespaces)?
- What features do these projects provide?
- What technical components are there?
- How do different components compare to each other in relevant categories such as functionality, stability, flexibility, extensibility, etc.
- How open are these projects and what limitations are there from a license point of view?

The ultimate goal is to provide a systematic guideline whether the discussed projects are a good fit for your specific project. Therefore, we compare the projects along with relevant criteria and use example use cases for indicating when a technology is a good fit and when it isn’t.

Speaker(s):
Jonas Helming (EclipseSource)

A

Hi welcome from my site and greetings from munich to wherever you are. Thank you for joining my talk, I'm jonas, I'm working for eclipse source. We are a company focused on designing and implementing tools and ides, so we support our customers in creating two chains, plugins extensions based on various platforms, and we are often also concerned with technology decisions and consult our customers to find the right technologies and frameworks for their use case, and that leads me to the topic for the talk today.

A

If we look at web-based tools, there are currently three very prominent technologies discussed a lot and they get a lot of traction, eclipse, thea, eclipse g and the vs code ecosystem and there's a lot of confusion going on like how do they relate to each other, how they do they compare to each other and my goal for today and the talk is to resolve some of this confusion, provide you a good overview and explain the relations and compare those technologies.

A

Although 30 minutes will not be enough to provide all the details, so I hope I can provide a good overview.

A

um Eclipsecon is a perfect place to learn more, so I hope I can encourage you if you find a certain technology, interesting that I talk about today, to look at the program and, for example, find more about eclipse, thea or eclipse j. In case they sound interesting to you all right, as we have a lot to cover, let's directly dive into it. My agenda will be. I will start with a comparison between vs code and eclipse thea, because they're both ide solutions, so they are comparable, although there are quite some differences.

A

um Second part will be at comparison between code spaces and eclipse g they're, both solutions to host um remote developer workspaces. So if you do the development in the cloud, you need such a solution to have a place for running the tools and the source code and so on and finally, obviously a conclusion some hints for which use cases which technology might be the best for you all right. Let's directly dive into that and start with comparing thea and vs code for vs code.

A

There are actually three things um that I consider the risk code product, the desktop product, the online version and the underlying open source project. Now what is vs code? Let's start with that. That is an extensible code. Editor. Probably most of you know that you can download it. It has a great usability very code, centric heavily focused on keyboard use. It really has like, like redone, the way that we built uh code editors and ides, and most developers like it. It is free of charge.

A

It is built on open source, although vs code, the downloadable product, is not open source. It is released under a proprietary microsoft product license and contains some pieces, for example telemetry that are not open source.

A

There are thousands of extensions available for language support, git support, linting static type, checking whatever so everything you want as a developer, you find in the visual studio code ecosystem and it is a downloadable desktop tool. The project vs code project is the open source project, which is the base obvious code.

A

It is a very active project and it has driven a lot of innovation in the tool market, for example the language server protocol, the monaco code editor. That's the web-based code, editor used in most ides today and a lot of other cool innovations so yeah. This is really a great input for for the tool market, because microsoft has really done a great job in providing all those things open source, so they can be consumed even be consumed by other products, but also, of course, by visual studio code.

A

It is driven by microsoft, as mentioned. um However, it is open, so there are other contributors too, but microsoft really puts a lot of effort in maintaining and further developing this uh this project um and as mentioned vs code, the project is used by other tools. For example, there's an open source build um called vs, codium and thea that we discussed today use vs code as a basis. So it's not fake open source. It is actually possible to use it or and to adopt it. So what is vs code online?

A

That's an online version of vs code hosted in vs code spaces. That's a workspace solution. We will come to that later. It runs in the browser and you can connect to remote workspace. It's currently bound to azure and it's currently not open source. It's like this code. It is a it is a product. However, the the online version is really not not open source at all, so you will not find any pieces of visual studio code online in the project.

A

What is ecliptia now thea is a open source platform for building web-based tools and ides. um So it's not a product. um It has a broader scope that it targets compared to vs code, because it's not only targeted at code centric tools, but also general purpose or domain specific tools with graphical editors, uh form-based, editors and so on.

A

So it tries to be more flexible than vs code in terms of what you can build with that it supports local and cloud deployment since in its inception, since three years, while resco online was released end of 2019 in a better version, it has a very modular and flexible architecture. I will mention more details about this later, because that's a core difference to vs code actually, and it's fully open source and hosted at the eclipse foundation, so it's hosted or governed in a vendor-neutral way.

A

Now I just mentioned the term platform, so vs code is a product, while fear is a platform. What does that mean? So this code is a downloadable product. This code online is a product embedded in azure and thea is a platform now that means you can. The the main purpose of fear is that you consume the platform to build a tool upon an example, for that is che, provides a ide called chase here, the the the default ide for che that is based on fia. Another example is gitpod.

A

An online ide service has another version of here that they use as a default for their service, and there are also domain specific tools, for example youngster for the young language, and this is actually a growing list. So there are quite a few companies adopting thea for building domain specific tools for their particular use case. So that's kind of the difference between a platform and um a product- and here currently does not yet provide a vanilla download. So you cannot just go to the website and just download here and start it.

A

um However, this is currently worked on so because that was requested a lot from the community to also have a core like like plain vanilla, thea product that you can download and that's on the way, so that will be released pretty soon.

A

Let's uh look at the reuse um because the those projects have quite some relation, so the basis for everything is the vs code project, the open source project, uh producing all those technologies and concepts for web-based tooling, and we have the vs code product and vs code online product directly, based on that as well as thea. Now blue in this diagram means that this is something that you can directly use.

A

This is definitely true for vs code and vs code online for thea. um It is very simple to start thea, but it is not per se a product. That's why I have it in light blue.

A

If installers are available, this might even change, but the the main goal for thea is, as mentioned, that you build something on top of it. um It is worth mentioning that thea not only uses technically vs code concepts, sorry framework pieces, but also adapts, for example, the usability concept, which is great because the vs code, usability concept, is great, at least that's my opinion, um and if you switch from vs code to a theater based product, you will not even notice the the keyboard commands are the same.

A

The quick access bar is the same, so they really not only share technology, but also a lot of concepts. Setting files are the same, so they're really really competent to each other.

A

The reason for that is when thea was intercepted.

A

The goal was to not reinvent the wheel but adapt whatever is there and is already great, and a lot of things in vs code are great, but then like do build something on top. That is even better and that's.

A

I think that that was achieved, and we will see in the comparison what thea can do even better compared to vsco.

A

Now, um the first uh category, where you really see a difference between thea and vs code, is the extensibility or adaptability. So how easy is it to change something in in thea or in this code? How easy is it to add something new now there, both technologies have uh different mechanisms for that. Vs code provides an api for plugins. They are called vs code extensions, um and this provides a very simple extension mechanism, because there is a well-documented api in which you can or against.

A

You can program your extensions and add something to the vs code code editor like menu items, actions that are triggered on compile language support and all the stuff and they run in an isolated container, and you can install them at run time and because it is so simple to write them. There are so many available, so microsoft made it really easy for extension developers to add features to bs code.

A

However, there's one drawback, you are limited to the api that is provided and- and this is really targeted, extending vs code, not so much at like building something completely custom. So there are some limits on what you can do and you cannot really change what is already there. So if you want to build something completely white labeled and remove the existing vs code features, that is definitely tricky to do see on the other side, because it was invented as platform has a modular architecture in its core already.

A

So everything in thea is an extension, even the core components and they all play by the same rule. Now, if you want to extend here, you can add your own extensions and you can access the the full api of all fia extensions that are already there.

A

That allows to basically do almost everything in theater you can remove existing stuff. You can overwrite framework features, you can white label it and there's almost no limit on what you can do and the drawbacks to this is so you have a lot of power. It is definitely more complex to use because it's not the small, well documented api that you have, um and you cannot install those extensions. The extensions during runtime you have to select at build time what extensions are part of your product.

A

Now um it would be hard to compare the two models because they both have their their advantages and disadvantages, but there is a missing piece here: um red hat actually contributed um a extension to the fear mechanism, and that is the plugin api obvious code, and what that means is, via as an alternative to the native extension mechanism, also supports the vs code extension mechanism.

A

In fact, you can actually use vs code extensions in theater, too, you can deploy them, they are compatible and for that reason, fia actually provides both extension mechanisms. The one installable at runtime, simple api and the one installable at build time, full api, full power, um and with this you can actually select for whatever use case you you select, which mechanism and which makes fear much more extensible and adaptable at the end, and that is one of the core advantages of thea compared to vs code.

A

Now, let's look at the available extensions, because that's also an interesting criteria like how many things can you download and install into the two frameworks or technologies?

A

Now um there is this huge vs code, marketplace of extension, literally with ten thousands of extensions for any purpose. However, unfortunately, this is restricted to vs code products, so um in thea, although it technically supports that you, you are, strictly speaking, not allowed to install something from the vs code marketplace, and for that reason, because that would be a major restriction.

A

Typefox actually contributed an alternative implementation to the vs code. Marketplace called the openvs x registry.

A

It has a similar feature set, so it can host vs code extension, but it is open in terms of where you can install them to so in any theater based product. You can consume this marketplace, um but also, for example, from bs, codium and so on. This marketplace is currently rapidly filling with solution, um so I cannot tell you the like the last number because it changes every day, but I would claim like the most important extensions are already there. I'm not missing anything.

A

um The thing is you don't need 10, 000 extensions, because probably 500 are the ones that are frequently used by people and the other ones are maybe not that important. Now this openbasex registry actually solves the problem for thea to participate in a huge ecosystem of extensions too. It is currently transferred to the eclipse foundation, so it will be hosted by a vendor neutral organization, so it's governed by uh by a vendor-neutral organization. So it is definitely the open alternative to the vs code marketplace.

A

Speaking about open. Let's look at how open the ecosystems are, and let's speak about vendor neutrality in this category. I will only compare the thea project with the vs code project, because vs code and vs code online are products so they're not open source and there's like there is no vendor neutrality. That's just a like an x, but let's compare the projects, so the vs code project is released under the mit license, so commercially friendly, it's governed by microsoft.

A

That means um I mean they have been very open with it uh and we're like they contribute a lot of stuff and still they they control the plot project. I mean they will likely not just take it away, but they can drive the direction and define the rules for this project. You have to be aware of that. If you adapt such a technology, the top 20 contributors in vs code and the project seem all to be affiliated with microsoft.

A

um That means this project is mainly driven by microsoft. In turn, they spend a lot of resources on that. So this is, I mean it is super stable because they they like just spend so much resources to be fair. Eclipse has, for many years, been mainly driven by ibm, and that also worked great. But again you have to be aware of this.

A

It has 1.4 million lines of code 420, active contributors, super active project. Eclipse here is released under the epl license and governed by the eclipse foundation and even supported by a working group, a consortium of different vendors.

A

That means it is governed in a render neutral way, because the the rules are defined by the eclipse foundation and not a single vendor can do decisions and like control the direction of this project, there are defined rules for decision making and who gets access and so on, and if you look at the top 20 contributors they're already six different companies.

A

If you go more down, you find much more and it is much smaller because it reuses a lot of components from the vs code project, but it has a lot of active contributors compared to the size to 110. Last I checked, what's especially worth mentioning.

A

If you look at the distribution of commits so down here, we see the companies that contributed over the last three months, but if we look at the top four contributors on the left side- and they all are in the same order of magnitude- so it's not this one company that drives everything in thea, but it's really like a collaboration between different parties, and this is like the dream of every open source project, because it's it clearly shows that this project is diverse, which is really a stable basis.

A

In case you're, you plan to adopt such a technology all right. Let's switch over to second comparison, which is vs code spaces versus eclipse g. Now I mentioned the term workspace server before, but let's quickly, look at what that actually means. Now, if you deploy a web-based tool in in the cloud you need some place to deploy it to and um if you, if, the, if you want to allow developers to run their tooling like compilers and so on, um on the file system, you need some container management.

A

So that's that's what we call a workspace container, that's kind of the remote environment, a developer works in and then typically you connect a browser-based ide to that workspace service also includes some workspace management to create workspaces, share them, delete them and so on. So this is the typical feature set of a workspace server. You could manually do that with kubernetes, but there are a lot of features that you actually need to make that happen. So it's a good idea to to look at existing solutions.

A

So what is vs code spaces, um probably the same by the way as github code spaces, but I was not accepted for the private better, so I cannot really say too much about github code spaces at the moment.

A

So with code spaces is a workspace server integrating vs code and we is called online. It is hosted on azure, um probably github code spaces will also be hosted on azure, but I don't know I couldn't check, because I was not accepted for the private better and the available ides. You can use to connect to your remote workspaces or is called online vs code. So you can connect the desktop version to the remote workspace too.

A

So basically, the the ide runs on your local machine, but the source code and the tooling and compilation and so on, is happening in the cloud and you can also connect visual studio code. So what is j same? It is a workspace server, but it integrates thea as a default. Ide hosting is much more flexible. You can host it on any kubernetes cluster, like aws openshift, gce azure, your own cluster, you name it minicube, deploy it where you want, and also the available ides are much more flexible.

A

So default is chaffia a theater-based ide, but there are a couple of others available like vs codium, jupiter classic eclipse. Intellij was recently announced and you can deploy your own custom ide. So you really have more choice. What to connect to your workspace over here?

A

So let's compare them in terms of configuration of the online workspaces like the virtual machines below that and workspaces. There are some basic options available in this code. You can define an installation script that is run when such environments are created.

A

However, this is limited in t you have what they call stack management.

A

It is nice, your eye where you can select from a catalog, for example, you can just create a developer workspace with java and spring boot and a database you can save those configurations share them with other. So this is definitely much more advanced, probably because j has quite a heads up in terms of so it is longer on the market, the available ides.

A

I talked about so limited to vs code for um for code spaces and freedom of choice for g in terms of sharing workspaces, because that's interesting in an online environment to be able to share your workspaces with others, and here you can actually create one-click urls to replicate a setup. So, for example, if you have a project with a certain setup, you can create a ul and you click that and she will automatically set up a workspace for you check, will check out the code and basically have this one-click experience for new developers.

A

um Vs code spaces supports a live sharing feature that is not supported by to mention some differences, so you can share. You can actually create a create a live session with a colleague and look at the same instance of the workspace at the same time, for example, for prayer programming or code review.

A

Now the major differences are that's really important. Eclipse j is a flexible solution, so it is open source um and it supports white labeling and all the features available in chi, especially the workspace management, are provided by api too.

A

So, for example, if you don't like the gui out of the box, but you want to integrate that in your own infrastructure or website, you can use j as a basis to build something custom and completely white label it, and it's allowed and it's it's supported, and if there's something you don't want it the way to be, you can change it because g is open source. This code space is not open.

A

That's why this comparison is again a little bit apples to oranges, because yeah because of the fact that vs code spaces is really a product and she is open source all right, um yeah and to meant to do to prove that there are a lot of companies actually contributing to jay as an open source project.

A

Now, before we come to the conclusion, um I would like to mention four technologies. Like honorable mentions, they didn't make it into the comparison, because I was already very short on time, but I at least wanted to mention that code ready workspaces are the professional supported version of eclipse g provided by red hat. It's identical to j and integrated in openshift, but you get professional support for that.

A

Gitpod is a workspace hosting solution integrated with github, gitlab and bitbucket.

A

It provides a thea based ide out of the box, it's very slim and fast, so um it you can literally start a workspace within like in under a minute with one click, and it has been recently open sourced, which is also pretty cool. um I would claim gitpod is probably the easiest way to try thea until the the installers are available.

A

Vs codium I mentioned that before is an open build for vs code in github code spaces. I can only assume that it's similar to vs code spaces because I couldn't try it in the better. I was not accepted, I'm still waiting on it all right. Let's come to the conclusion. I will do this quick.

A

Just give you hints um what could be the primary choice uh based on different criteria, so we will start to look at this from the viewpoint of a user, so you just want to use a tool we use code. If you just want a downloadable application, you just want to code something it's still a great tool, there's nothing against it. Vs code online, if you're using azure. Otherwise you cannot use it, but then it's cool. It's perfectly integrated eclipse here.

A

If you prefer open tools like if you're, not fine with the license or the telemetry in envious code, uh thea might be a good can alternative, and if you use any any solution that builds on thea like j gitport or any other theater based tool and the good news, you will probably not even notice any difference as a user.

A

We use codespaces if you want to use wisecode online, because that's the only way currently to consume it and if you use azure and if you find with a feature set and the login and eclipse t if you want to self-host your workspace hosting with some flexibility now as an adopter.

A

So that means you want to build something based on on this technology vs code. If you just want to add a little extension and you're fine with vs code, then vs code is a good option.

A

It's very like everybody uses it and if you just want to add a little bit good good choice, eclipse here, if you will something custom and white labeled and more flexibility, if you want to build something that is not fully code centric, you probably need this flexibility and if you care about vendor neutrality and the login, you probably have with vs code vs code spaces and vs code online.

A

If you run azure in eclipse g, if you want to extend and adapt or integrate or even white label your workspace hosting, so then you cannot do all this with vs code spaces and again, if you care about render neutrality and login as an extension developer, if you, if you provi, want to provide us a tool for as many people as possible benefit from the vs code plugin model, that's the way to go because then you can use it in or people can use it in vs code and here, but consider to publish it to the vs code marketplace and the openbasex registry, because you just increase the the target audience all right um before I come to questions.

A

um I know that this was quite fast and a lot of content, but I had to squeeze it in time, so I hope it still provided a valuable information to you in case you liked this session. Please consider to evaluate it if you didn't like it just just forget about it.

A

No, but this helps future program committees to like to select good content, um and now I would like to open it up for questions. I will take some questions in case. I cannot answer them right now feel free to get in contact with me. We have a booth at this conference where you can talk to us and we have a session particularly about building web-based tools tomorrow uh evening at uh 7 pm, and now I'm happy to take questions. Okay, um so, let's take some questions, have to look at that so one there.

A

Actually, a couple of questions about tools that are not text, centric or more graphical oriented or a diagram include some diagrams. So there are a couple of technologies for that. I recommend you look at the emf.cloud project and also technologies like sprotty or glsp, and there are also other talks at this conference about those technologies.

A

Another question is about whether thea will be the new rcp.

A

I would say it depends a bit if you think about business application. Probably not that's, not really the goal, but if we talk about domain specific applications like, for example, tools for engineers and stuff, so basically tools that are not necessarily code centric only which has been a widely common use case for rcp. Then I would say yes and that's, I would say one core strength of thea, because it is so flexible, so you can do much more adaptations compared to vs code.

A

I'm running short in time by the way- and please remember to you- can ask question, for example, at our booth by the way, the session that I just mentioned is today not tomorrow, ah and one important mention from the audience. Thank you for sharing this information. So vs code is being deprecated soon and it is basically replaced by github code spaces that was kind of to be expected and it is expected to be a very similar feature set.

A

So if you replace vs code online with github code spaces, probably my uh the information I've shared today is still valid um yeah. Actually, I received quite a lot of question.

A

um Actually I think I have to close it for time reasons, but just just ping me on the conference, I'm happy to answer all those questions or join the session today and evening at seven and with that. Thank you.