I had a colleague ping me today saying that he likes Eclipse but wished there was some terminal access inside of Eclipse (he’s a Linux guy). I told him I had a solution via the Target Management (TM) project at Eclipse. In essence, the TM project creates data models and frameworks to configure and manage remote (mainframe down to embedded) systems, their connections, and their services. While that sounds all great, let me just dive into what TM offers that most people would find useful.
First, to fulfill my colleague’s request of opening a local shell in Eclipse, TM handles that well (you should start with the Remote System Explorer perspective), simply open the Remote Systems view and right click on the Local Shells item to open a shell as shown below.
On top of local access, TM can even do better and give you access to remote systems. For example, I find myself hacking on build.eclipse.org a lot and the ability to seamlessly open a shell, browse the file system and edit files is priceless…
Did you know about TM and the remote system capabilities? I believe TM is one of those hidden gems in Eclipse.