Open source content management company Nuxeo is targeting Eclipse developers by releasing a new Integrated Development Environment (IDE) in order to bring support for Eclipse to the Nuxeo platform. The platform itself is characterized as both "customizable and extensible" thanks to its OSGi-based plugin model. Nuxeo's message to developers and solution architects therefore is an offer of tools to build content management applications that correspond to a wide diversity of use cases.

Most of the customization needed to adapt to this "diverse range" of use cases can be managed by the Nuxeo Studio graphical toolset. However, extending the Nuxeo Platform to create new features requires more advanced development work, which includes writing new source code. This was previously reserved only for experienced Java developers familiar with the Nuxeo Platform.

The company now says that the Nuxeo IDE offers an ALL developer-friendly environment for customization work that enables programmers — from beginners to experts — to take advantage of the Nuxeo Platform.

Mike Milinkovich, executive director at the Eclipse Foundation, has stated that he hopes the Nuxeo IDE will be a "welcome contribution" for the solution architects who rely on Eclipse and the Nuxeo Platform for their enterprise content management development and execution. "Nuxeo has a history of synchronizing its custom technologies with the Eclipse community, accelerating open source innovation for all developers," he said.

For content management application builders who want to create sophisticated yet sustainable solutions based on the Nuxeo Platform, Nuxeo says that its new IDE Eclipse plugin will enable efficient, streamlined development that capitalizes on, and complements, the Nuxeo Studio configuration environment.

Key features include: templates and wizards used to guide the creation of new plugins, including content operations, content services, content converters, web apps, and user actions; code completion for the content model when bound to a Nuxeo Studio project; automated dependency management for Maven-based projects, enabling generation and management of POM files; and integration of Nuxeo Shell to facilitate development and debugging.