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Are there advantages of using Emacs instead of Eclipse for Android development?

If so, what are they?

Android Eve
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3 Answers3

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This is not really a platform-specific question. Instead, you're asking a question about development environments, which comes down to personal preference. Do you like working with emacs, in general, more than you like working with Eclipse? Do you prefer the "construct your own environment out of different scripts and your own lisp hacking" approach to the monolithic distribution-plus-plugins approach?

If you can be more productive with one or the other, that's the one that you should use. It has nothing to do with developing for Android versus, say, writing web-apps.

Check out this previous question: What are the efficiencies afforded by Emacs or Vim vs Eclipse?

Community
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asthasr
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    +1. Everyone has personal preferences but I am trying to see whether there are "objective features" that exist in Emacs but not in Eclipse -- and specifically for **Android development**. Are there any? – Android Eve Jan 06 '11 at 18:54
  • There are tons. Emacs is easily extensible -- it can basically do *anything*. The problem is that its extensions are not as well-integrated as the smaller feature sets of a dedicated IDE. Code completion, for example, is "fun" to set up for different languages. – asthasr Jan 06 '11 at 18:58
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Though it doesn't refer specific to android apps I would say performance...emacs is way faster than java editors, I had lots of slowdowns using netbeans...now I find my self spending this extra time learning about emacs, hopefully in the future I would discover many more advantages...

rabidmachine9
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  • +1 for referring to an "objective feature" (i.e. measurable). I wonder whether the speed difference compensates for some visual goodies available only in Eclipse, in terms of "time to market". – Android Eve Jan 07 '11 at 16:01
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    Emacs might have meant "Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping" 15 years ago when 8 megs was a lot, but today it should be considered a light weight editor. A lot of the "visual goodies" available in Eclipse are also available in Emacs, but it takes a bit of searching to find the extensions. – klang Jan 08 '11 at 09:08
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    klang is right...I am sure there would be lots of convenient features in emacs but again you will have to sweat in the beginning http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/emacs.pdf also R.Stallman's writing is very nice... and did I mentioned that emacs is way cooler than Eclipse? – rabidmachine9 Jan 08 '11 at 09:45
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From a purely Android perspective, there is better integration with Eclipse than anything else. See eclipse adt for the extent of eclipse intergration, and other ides for how it would work in emacs.

Otherwise, it is a personal preference and very subjective.

Cheryl Simon
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  • @alex - Given the author of emacs, I hope you were punning on the hilarity of mentioning emacs in conjunction with God. – Tim Post Jan 22 '11 at 01:31