Linux Tools 2.0, Top Eclipse Kepler Feature #7

A common theme among Eclipse tools is that they keep you focused on your task by keeping you in the IDE. Linux Tools, which is number 7 on my Eclipse Kepler Top 10 List is no different. Linux Tools keeps C/C++ developers (and other Linux developers) focused on their work by bringing all the tools they need into Eclipse.

The Eclipse Linux Tools project actually serves two purposes. First, the project provides tools and frameworks for writing tools relevant to Linux Developers; and secondly, the project provides a place for Linux distributions to collaborate and overcome issues related to packaging of Eclipse technology.

Linux Tools 2.0 is shipping with Eclipse Kepler and contains a number of improvements. Most notably, the profiling framework has been revised, integrating several popular profiling tools into a single location.

Linux Tools 2.0 has also introduced a standard profile launch configuration, which allows you to launch existing C/C++ applications with profiling enabled. With this action, you can reuse all your existing launch configurations, with profiling enabled.

This allows for fast turn-around from coding, to debugging, to launching, to profiling to analyzing your system.

The LTTng Eclipse integration got the most attention in this release. You can import and open several traces simultaneously or connect to a network a stream the trace information. The statistics view has been updated with a number of performance improvements as well.

 The control flow view now supports process filters.

And the generic call stack view allows users to visualize the call stack per thread over time.

Perf, and Systemtap integration has also been improved. In all, 17 different committers contributed to this release. Linux Tools (like the C/C++ Tools (CDT)) is a very open project with contributions from 3 different organizations plus a number of individual committers.

Thanks everyone for your great work on making Linux Tools 2.0 possible.

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