Eclipse has other lives....
I'm not a great fan of Eclipse but I've found myself using it time and again. Not to develop applications -- it seems to be a lot of bloat and bother to make mere programs -- but as the foundation for development systems supplied by chip vendors. The three I've worked with recently include the Code Composer Stuido from Texas Instruments for DSP development and toolsets from Xilinxx and Lattice (they each provide nested development environments, one for the FPGAs itself, the other for their soft processor if you're using it). These toolsets use a fair amount of scripting (especialyl the FPGA ones) which I'd guess is where the MS bite would come in -- MS has only recently discovered shell scripts and they're constantly reinventing scripting languages targeted exclusively towards their software ecosystem so it may be problematical trying to integrate true third party tools into their environment. (Their USB driver support tends to be a bit hit and miss as well -- not a big issue unless you're trying to use a JTAG loader/debugger.)
Corporate loves its Windows software ecosystem but the reality is that if you need to get serious non-Windows application work done then you need to work on Linux. The majority of the tools that I use in a Windows environment are running under Cygwin, its not a perfect solution so I'd guess one reason why MSFT is pushing a Linux environment embedded in their platform is the recognition of the inevitable -- Its becoming increasingly difficult to work in a Windows environment, especially a modern locked down one, so they either have to bow to the inevitable or lose the trade.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
