RE: Eclipse

[Buck Calabro <Buck.Calabro@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Once written, that program can then run on any platform that Eclipse
>supports, completely unmodified.  Currently, this includes:
>
>Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
>Linux (x86/Motif)
-snip-

Joe, I think you missed a step.

Booth,
Eclipse is the development environment; a super-editor, if you'll allow me
the liberty.  It has personalities (called perspectives) for each different
language you want to work with.  There's a Web perspective, an RPG
perspective, etc.  Unless I missed something big, you can edit your RPG and
Java in Eclipse but you can't actually run the binary code there.

Also, Java can be targeted to the desktop like any other thick client (say
VaRPG) or the web via a servlet engine like Tomcat or WebSphere Application
Server.  And before I get dinged for it, I know that WDSc has a version of
WAS that comes with it, so technically you CAN run your web-based Java from
there, but it's not intended for production.

So, a desktop-based Java app can indeed run on any platform which has a JVM,
including Windows, Linux and Mac.  It is possible that the Java application
can even run on platforms that the Eclipse IDE does not support, like
iSeries (for instance, I've written some stored procedures in Java which run
on the iSeries.)  A web-based Java app can run on any platform that supports
a browser.  

The bottom line is that Eclipse is the development/edit/test tool and is
absolutely not needed at runtime.
  --buck