The Eclipse Theia Community Release 2024-11

We are happy to announce the eighth Eclipse Theia community release “2024-11”, version 1.55.x!

New to Eclipse Theia? It is the next-generation platform for building IDEs and tools for the web or desktop, based on modern state-of-the-art web technologies. For more details, please refer to this article and visit the Theia website.

The Theia project also releases a product, the Theia IDE. The Eclipse Theia IDE is a modern and open IDE for cloud and desktop aimed at end users. The Theia IDE is based on the Theia platform. For more details, see the Theia IDE website.

In contrast to the monthly releases, community releases are provided every quarter by the Theia project. A dedicated release branch allows contributors to harden and even hotfix a community release. Finally, third-party technologies, such as Eclipse GLSP or CDT Cloud, select the community release as a compatibility anchor, i.e., they provide versions that are compatible with a specific community release. Learn more about the advantages of the Theia community release and visit the Theia release page.

Let’s dive into some highlights on the road to this eighth Theia community release!

Highlights of the Theia 2024-11 Community Release

This community release is the result of three months of development. Therefore, the 2024-11 release contains the improvements that were added in the Theia releases 1.53, 1.54, and 1.55, which is a total of 189 pull requests. Let’s look at some highlights!

Theia AI: Empowering Tool Builders with Advanced AI Capabilities

Theia AI, introduced with Theia 1.54, is a powerful framework designed to enable tool builders to seamlessly integrate AI-powered features into their tools and IDEs. This framework provides a robust and flexible set of APIs and components, addressing the common challenges of working with large language models (LLMs) and AI systems.

With Theia AI, developers can efficiently manage:

• LLM Communication: Easily configure and interact with various AI models, including OpenAI, self-hosted, and custom models.
• Prompt Management: Tailor and optimize prompts to suit specific workflows, ensuring that AI responses are accurate and context-aware.
• Data Exchange: Maintain full transparency and control over the data exchanged between the tool and the AI, adhering to security and privacy standards.

This framework empowers tool builders to focus on innovation, allowing them to design unique, domain-specific AI functionalities. Whether it’s implementing smart chat interfaces, context-sensitive code completions, or providing AI-driven insights for graphical tools, Theia AI simplifies the process, enabling faster time to market.

Theia AI has already been adopted successfully in real-world scenarios, showcasing its versatility and readiness for production use. Its modular architecture ensures that developers can build AI-powered tools without maintaining separate forks or diverging from the central codebase.

For a detailed introduction to Theia AI and its capabilities, visit the dedicated blog post.

Experimental AI Support in Theia IDE

With Theia 1.54, the IDE introduces experimental AI features like terminal assistants and code completions. Unlike traditional integrations, Theia IDE ensures transparency and user control over AI interactions. Learn more.

Collaboration Support with Open Collaboration Tools

Theia 1.53 introduced a powerful new feature: Open Collaboration Tools, enabling seamless real-time collaboration directly within Theia-based IDEs. This feature allows users to share sessions, collaboratively edit files, and interact within various views, including terminals and diagrams. Unlike other solutions, Open Collaboration Tools offer full transparency and control by being fully open source and self-hostable. Companies can use this technology securely without vendor lock-in, ensuring sensitive data stays private. Learn more about the potential of Open Collaboration Tools in this press release.

Theia IDE Available on Snap

With Theia 1.55, the Theia IDE is now available on Snap, offering simplified installation across various Linux distributions. Users benefit from automatic updates and increased security through Snap’s containerized packaging system. Try it out now!

Notebook Editor Enhancements

Theia 1.54 introduced significant updates to the Notebook editor, including improved cell output handling and drag-and-drop functionality, enhancing usability for interactive notebook users. Explore the details.

Upgraded Dependency Support

Across the last three releases, dependency updates include dropping support for Node.js 16.x, upgrading to Electron 26, and enhanced VS Code extension API compatibility, now supporting version 1.94.1. These updates improve security, stability, and extensibility for Theia users.

As always, please refer to the individual release announcements (1.53, 1.54, and 1.55) for a comprehensive list of improvements.

We are looking forward to the next Theia community release in February 2025!

Build Your Own IDE or Tool with Eclipse Theia

If you are interested in building custom tools or IDEs based on Eclipse Theia, EclipseSource provides consulting and implementation services for Eclipse Theia, for building AI-powered tools and IDEs as well as for web-based tools in general. We are happy to announce that we provide a new Eclipse Theia online training that you can conduct anytime, anywhere. It provides you and your team with a jump start for the development of your own custom solutions based on Eclipse Theia extensions.

Furthermore, if you want to extend Theia with features such as the toolbar or the test framework, EclipseSource provides sponsored development for Theia, too. Finally, we provide consulting and support for hosting web-based tools in the cloud. Get in contact with us, to discuss your use case!