What you find in this directory:


CurrentRelease/
	Shortcuts to the current stable release (sources and binaries
	for each architecture).


Builds/X.Y_Z
	Current (and older) ECLiPSe versions X.Y with build number Z.

	You should download the latest build number available, because it
	will contain the latest bug fixes.  Apart from that, differences
	between builds of the same release number will be minimal.
	New builds appear every couple of days, and are not normally
	a reason to upgrade, unless they fix a bug that affects you.

	Download binaries from the subdirectory appropriate for your
	hardware and operating system, e.g.

		i386_nt		Windows NT/XP/7/8/10 etc 32-bit
		x86_64_nt	Windows NT/XP/7/8/10 etc 64-bit

		i386_linux	Intel/Linux 32-bit
		x86_64_linux	Intel/Linux 64-bit

		armv7_linux	ARM/Linux 32-bit (e.g. Raspberry Pi 2/3/4)
		aarch64_linux	ARM/Linux 64-bit (e.g. Raspberry Pi 3/4)

		x86_64_macosx	Intel/MacOS-X 64-bit
		i386_sunos5	Intel/Solaris 32-bit
		sparc_sunos5	Sparc/Solaris 32-bit

	Not every build is guaranteed to have binaries for all architectures!

	We recommend to use older ECLiPSe versions only if you have an unusual
	compatibility problem.


Dev/
	Development pre-releases, containing the latest features/additions.
	These builds have successfully passed the test suite, but may contain
	features that are incompatible with the current stable release, and/or
	not yet documented.  They may also lack recent bug fixes that have
	so far only been applied to the stable version.


pub/
	Sources of third-party libraries that are packaged with ECLiPSe,
	if required by their licence conditions.


thirdparty/
	Sources for third-party components to which ECLiPSe can interface.
	These are usually only needed when building ECLiPSe (or the
	corresponding interfaces) from source.


Saros/
	Plugin for eclipse framework (www.eclipse.org).  Saros provides
	an IDE for ECLiPSe within eclipse. Most of the facilities
	(except the integrated editor) is provided by the Tcl/Tk
	based GUI that is distributed with ECLiPSe.


Editors ECLiPSe support/
	Distribution of support files for various popular editors,
	providing syntax highlighting and other features for these
	editors with ECLiPSe source files.


=========================================

Choice of 64 vs 32 bit:

For the processors we distribute, the 32 bit version of ECLiPSe also
runs on the 64 bit version of the OS, so you can choose which to use.


* 64 bit can address >4G (32 bit) of address space, so programs that consumes 
  >4G of memory can be run.

* most data representation requires twice as much space on 64 bit, so about 
  twice as much memory as on 32 bit will be consumed running the same program.
  [Exception: reals (floating points) are represented more directly on
  64 bit, and consume less memory than on 32 bit]

* performance (execution speed) should be similar for 64 and 32 bit for
  most operations. There may be slight differences (5-10%) depending on 
  processor/OS. Operations involving reals and large (33-64 bit) integers
  should be faster with 64 bit.