Introduction to Eclipse Che

  • A centralized developer environment running on Kubernetes or OpenShift.

  • A multi-container workspace for each developer with the ability to replicate with a single click using Eclipse Che factories.

  • Pre-built stacks with the ability to create custom stacks for any language or runtime.

  • An enterprise integration using OpenShift OAuth or Dex.

  • Browser-based IDEs; integration with Microsoft Visual Studio Code - Open Source and others such as JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition.

  • Support of tools protocols, such as the Language Server Protocol or Debug Adapter Protocol.

  • A plugin mechanism compatible with Visual Studio Code extensions.

  • A software development kit (SDK) for creating custom cloud developer platforms.

Getting started with Che

Joining the community

Interested in joining the community? Join us on the following channels:

Public chat

Join the public Eclipse Cloud Dev Tools Working Group on Slack and the #forum-che channel to chat with the developers.

GitHub project repositories

Report bugs, request features, and contribute in the main Eclipse Che repository.

Improve documentation in the Eclipse Che docs repository.

Support

Visit StackOverflow to help other users of Eclipse Che: Eclipse Che on StackOverflow.

Community blog

Learn about the latest of Eclipse Che and submit your blog posts to the Eclipse Che blog.

Community meetings

Join us in the Che community meeting, available on-demand.

Roadmap

See the development roadmap on the wiki.

What is Eclipse Che

Eclipse Che is a Kubernetes-native IDE and developer collaboration platform.

As an open source project, the core goals of Eclipse Che are to:

  • Accelerate project and developer onboarding: As a zero-install development environment that runs in your browser, Eclipse Che makes it easy for anyone to join your team and contribute to a project.

  • Remove inconsistency between developer environments: No more: “But it works on my machine.” Your code works exactly the same way in everyone’s environment.

  • Provide built-in security and enterprise readiness: As Eclipse Che becomes a viable replacement for VDI solutions, it must be secure and it must support enterprise requirements, such as role-based access control and the ability to remove all source code from developer machines.

To achieve those core goals, Eclipse Che provides:

  • Workspaces: Container-based developer workspaces providing all the tools and dependencies needed to code, build, test, run, and debug applications.

  • Browser-based IDEs: Bundled browser-based IDEs with language tools, debuggers, terminal, VCS integration, and much more.

  • Extensible platform: Bring your own IDE. Define, configure, and extend the tools that you need for your application by using plugins, which are compatible with Visual Studio Code extensions.

  • Enterprise Integration: Multiuser capabilities with OIDC authentication.

Workspace model

Che defines the workspace to be the project code files and all the dependencies necessary to edit, build, run, and debug them. Che treats the IDE and the development runtime as dependencies of the workspace. These items are embedded and always included with the workspace. This differentiates Che from classical workspace definitions, which can include the project code, but require the developer to bind their IDE to their workstation and use it to provide a runtime locally.

Workspaces are isolated from one another and are responsible for managing the lifecycle of their components.

Developers using Eclipse Che use their containers directly in their developer workspaces. Che workspaces are Kubernetes or OpenShift Pods, which allow to replicate the application runtimes (and its microservices) used in production and provide a “developer mode” layer on top of those, adding intelligent code completion and IDE tools.

Enterprise integration

  • An enterprise integration using OpenShift OAuth or Dex.

  • Every Eclipse Che user gets a centralized developer workspace that can be easily defined, administered, and managed.

  • As a Kubernetes-native application, Eclipse Che provides state-of-the-art monitoring and tracing capabilities, integrating with Prometheus and Grafana.

Additional resources