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I understand that SpringSource Tool Suite is based on Eclipse.

I am coding Grails. STS is often pissing me off. I was thinking of installing Eclipse instead with a Grails plugin - will it just be the same?

What's better? STS or Eclipse?

cdeszaq
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Nathan H
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7 Answers7

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Have you considered IntelliJ, it has excellent Grails and Groovy support. I had been a eclipse guy for years but I am loving IntelliJ now.

IntelliJ Grails Features

Aaron Saunders
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  • It seems the community edition does not support Grails - do I read this right? http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/editions_comparison_matrix.html – Nathan H Nov 03 '10 at 19:11
  • @nute i dont think so. You gotta pay the big bucks if you want Intellij with Grails support... – hvgotcodes Nov 03 '10 at 19:53
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    @nute: This is the main disadvantage of IntelliJ; I'd use it if it was free! – codeporn Nov 04 '10 at 14:04
  • I agree intelliJ has awesome grails support, but paying for that license hurts. STS is getting better though - I think they'll eventually catch up... – revdrjrr Dec 09 '10 at 17:19
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I believe STS incorporated the original Groovy plugin so you're honestly better off with STS than you are trying to hack together Eclipse with the old plugin.

That said, other IDEs with good Groovy/Grails support are:

I've personally tried IntelliJ and I liked it for Grails. I have not tried NetBeans but I've heard it is good.

Andrew Eisenberg
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Matt Lachman
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  • Liked IntelliJ for grails as well – Tom Apr 20 '11 at 16:34
  • IntelliJ IDEA is fantastic for Grails if you can cough up the licensing fee :/ Although TBH even using the community edition with no Grails support isn't bad! It has good performance compared to Netbeans and Eclipse (in my experience). – Charles Wood Jul 17 '13 at 21:01
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STS has better Groovy n Grails support. The latest version i.e. 2.5.0 has better features and bug fixes. I would suggest you stick to STS rather than Eclipse. I have been using it for last couple of months and it is very stable. The latest version has much better features and is more stable than previous versions.

Jay Chandran
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I found Eclipse with the Grails plugin easier to configure than STS, so I started out down that route. STS seems overly clunky and too specialized - if your app is anything over than a very vanilla grails app I'd say Eclipse is better.

Having said all of that, I tried IntelliJ IDEA and fell in love with it. I even forked out the $200 for a personal licence when my company said no to buying a license!

Emma
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STS is an Eclipse distribution packaged by SpringSource, who also own Grails project. You should bring your specific issue to the vendor or at least describe them in your question.

Eugene Kuleshov
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I think you should definitely opt for STS - the integration of the Groovy resp. the Grails plugin is much better than in Eclipse.

On the other hand, the question is hard to answer without getting religious subjective; what are the issues you encoutered in STS and what makes you think they won't occur or even be more annoying in the main Eclipse distribution with no native Groovy/Grails support?

codeporn
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I have been unsuccessful trying to use the Grails plugin on Eclipse. After a lot of work finding the right repositories for missing dependencies, the Grails plugin practically took over Eclipse, it became a quasi STS Eclipse. Even the home window became the STS window!

I guess the producers of STS are basically trying to convince you to switch to STS, instead of using their almost worthless plugin, and going through the pain of getting the plugin working, and getting at the end a STS clone.

You are better off just using STS, but it angers me that people who like Eclipse or MyEclipse have to be forced to use STS' specific version of Eclipse.

luiscolorado
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  • You have to realize that Grails tooling is not designed to be used outside of STS. Because STS is built on top of Eclipse and uses p2 as its provisioning manager, it is possible to install Grails support without explicitly downloading STS. However, since Grails support uses many of the core APIs inside of STS, it is not possible to install Grails support without installing the other pieces. – Andrew Eisenberg Mar 27 '11 at 04:30
  • I find that unfortunate. That gives me pause, because I don't like plugins that lock you in a specific IDE. – luiscolorado Apr 01 '11 at 15:44
  • @luiscolorado @Andrew Eisenberg You can install Eclipse 3.6 with STS plugins. The update site is kind of hidden but you don't need to use the prebundled STS to get the grails plugins. – Adam Gent Jul 12 '11 at 00:07
  • @AdamGent do you have a link? – Eric Wilson Jul 20 '11 at 14:22