Orion software development environment

Zodiac Developer

Git Integration

Orion is closely integrated with Git, not only when importing complete projects, but also as it applies to your daily work, which has a separate Git view (Figure 2), in which you see both the Git history and the status of your own files.

Figure 2: The Git view of a project. Git is seamlessly integrated into the Eclipse interface.

In this view, you can check your changes against the repository, update files that coworkers have checked in, and contribute commits to your own files. All of this is completely clear-cut and works without detailed knowledge of the underlying commands.

Another helpful view is available in the editor. From the Tools menu item you will find the Blame view, which shows exactly who contributed which line and when (Figure 3). Clicking branches to the Git view lets you see the changes in context (i.e., history, diffs).

Figure 3: The Blame view shows who added which lines and when.

Test Environment

If you are developing a web application, you will want to launch a test environment in the Sites tab (the globe symbol in the left column) with just a few clicks by creating a mapping between a path in the project and a URL path. Physically the site runs under a new subdomain (for a local installation, this is http://127.0.0.2:8080 ). Of course, creating a site only makes sense for web projects.

Beyond Orion

More details about Orion can be found in the documentation [4], which you might notice is outdated (e.g., when it mentions Java 1.6 as a mandatory requirement). However, this does not mean that Orion is an outdated project; on the contrary, it is actively developed.

Under the auspices of the Eclipse Foundation, the Eclipse Che [5] project is currently establishing itself. Che temporarily used Orion as its editor and goes even further with regard to the development environment on the network. Whereas Orion provides only simple URL mapping for testing, Che provides teams a complete development environment. Because Che relies on Docker, the team administrator can configure exactly the components needed for a project.

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