When comparing SourceLair vs Eclipse with JSDT, the Slant community recommends SourceLair for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript IDEs or editors?” SourceLair is ranked 16th while Eclipse with JSDT is ranked 34th. The most important reason people chose SourceLair is:
SourceLair provides a minimal Django stack which can be used to host projects and see development results right away. Plus, there's a public link that can be used to share with colleagues or team.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Django stack, out of the box
SourceLair provides a minimal Django stack which can be used to host projects and see development results right away. Plus, there's a public link that can be used to share with colleagues or team.
Pro Simple and efficient interface
SourceLair features a very efficient interface, containing only the tools needed, thus providing focus on what's important - code.
Pro GitHub integration
SourceLair lets you log in and sign up with your GitHub account. This enables you to clone your GitHub repos with a single click and start working immediately on them.
Pro Git & Mercurial support
Every software project on sourceLair is backed up by the Source Control Manager of your choice; Git or Mercurial. Clone repos, commit, pull and push changes and work with branches on the cloud without having to install and configure anything or worry about compatibility between your Source Control Manager and the system of your choice.
Pro PHP real-time preview
You can split you editor and watch the result of your code in real time.
Pro Provides quick fixes
Eclipse with JSDT provides you with quick fixes every time a warning or error is raised by the IDE. This feature is particularly helpful at places in code where errors were caused by the programmer just being a little "lazy", such as missing out the +
sign between two operands or a variable being out of scope.
Pro Smart Code completion
Just like all other IDEs, Eclipse offers you inline code completion (even with any external JS libraries added to the project).
Pro Free and cross-platform
Eclipse runs on Windows, Linux and Mac, and is totally free of cost.
Pro Code refactoring
Eclipse's refactoring features are quite similar to Webstorm's. It provides almost the same functionalities which include renaming, moving, and member extraction to make your code tidier
Pro Code auto-completion for brackets and parenthesis
This feature is particularly useful when you've added a lot of nesting in your code and you're unable to recall which opening bracket corresponds to which closing one.
Pro Large selection of plugins
Eclipse has a large and active community, which has resulted in a wide variety of plugins.
Pro Highly customizable
Thanks to the large variety of plugins and various configuration options available, Eclipse is very customizable.
Pro Seamless integration with web servers like Apache or Jetty
Eclipse lets you integrate web servers (like Apache or Jetty) into the IDE, which you could use for in-container testing or providing services.
Pro Good integration with git using eGit plugin
Pulling, pushing, staging, stashing, etc., are all available in Eclipse as IDE functionalities.
Cons
Con Expensive
SourceLair offers a free plan that allows you one private project. However if you want more projects, the Pro plan is fairly expensive at $8/month ($96/year).
Con Non free/libre (proprietary)
Con Uses a lot of memory
Eclipse hogs a lot of memory, although this can be controlled by the IDE start-up ini file.
Con Plugins can be unstable
Though there are plenty of plugins to choose from, they aren't always reliable. Some aren't maintained, bug fixes can be slow, and you may need to download plugins from multiple sources.
Con Support and problem solving is difficult to find
The Eclipse forums have more tumbleweed than users. Stack-overflow also has very little info.
