Eclipse IDE for (Java and reports, PHP and Android)

There are different version of eclipse for different development environment.

My question is IF IDE remains same then why different versions, and if someone want to use all supported environments in single IDE how he/she can achieve that.

I want to use eclipse as single IDE for PHP, Java & Reports and Android development, instead of using different installation of eclipse.

Somebody helps me or refer me some link, it's quite confusing!

All the versions of Eclipse on the main site download page are the same version of Eclipse, but packaged with different sets of plugins. You can always install more features in Eclipse by installing more plugins.

You can have a single installation of Eclipse and use it for all your development needs - depending on your tastes however, it may sometimes be more manageable to have separate installations of Eclipse for different tasks (when there are a lot of plugins, Eclipse can take noticeably more time to start.)

There ARE different versions of Eclipse out there. But if we stick to one version and look at why there are different variants to download it's basically just that they come prepackaged with a specific component. So if you would like to use your Eclipse for C++ development you can get going with on single download. Instead of downloading the main IDE and then adding the module to support C++.

But after you install Eclipse, with any prepackaged modules, it's easy to add new ones. Say you have Zend Studio which is a PHP IDE based on Eclipse. You can still add all other modules supported by the version of Eclipse that Zend Studio is based on. For instance the Android SDK kit for Android development. You can add most modules by doing a search for them and finding the url to it's update site. Then click Help->Install New Software. Then you click Add and add the URL of the Update site of the module you wish to install.

Then you can select it from the Work with drop-down and it should appear in the list. Select it and click Next.

That way you can install almost all available modules for Eclipse. Note that sometimes you can run in to compatibility issues between installed modules and dependency problems. But most of the time it works fine.

They are not different versions, just the same backend with plugins for the particular language. Just that the specific versions are configured for best use with the language specified. If you want to use more languages than the default one in the eclipse you downloaded, just download the plugins you require and install in your installation of eclipse

Eclipse is plugin based IDE and these plugins may not like each other sometimes. It will be better to use more installations. In fact if you are developing Java and PHP you will need only 2 of them. STS is a good Java toolkit especially if you work with spring.

If you new to Eclipse you should know that it can go crazy couple of times per month if you install too much and it is very annoying to see that one day your webapp is deploying and second day no...

Keeping installation separated you will have better control.