STS vs. Eclipse for Grails?

Question

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?

Answer 1

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:

• IntelliJ IDEA: http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/groovy_grails.html
• NetBeans: http://netbeans.org/features/groovy/ (but development on Grails support appears to have stopped since 6.8.0)

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

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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!

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

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?

Answer 7

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.