For kicks last night, I decided to see how well Apache Harmony could run Eclipse. The answer is “pretty well”.
The Eclipse platform itself runs very well. I edited a bunch of files, manipulated a bunch of resources, dabbled a bit with some properties and preferences, and just generally kicked things about. It all seemed to run rock solid.
I turned my attention to Java development. I made a Java project with a couple of classes and everything compiled just fine (so the JDT seems to work). I can run the application, but so far, I haven’t been able to get the debugger to work.
From what I can tell (and I am no expert in this area), it seems that JDWP—which Eclipse needs to debug a JVM—hasn’t been implemented yet; though there is a contribution in the bug tracking system that will hopefully resolve this soon (if I read the bug correctly, the contribution has been accepted, but hasn’t made it into their build system yet).
I can debug a Java application running on a different JVM from Eclipse running on Harmony. The debugger running on Harmony works just fine.
