Multiple screens are a real productivity booster for every developer: it extends your ‘real estate’ and allows you to have more things visible all the time. Personally I always have a dual screen system in use. Well, except when I’m traveling. But I wish I would have it there too! Eclipse started to support the multiscreen environment already a while back. The easiest thing is to use the menu Window > New Window:

Menu to create a new eclipse IDE main window

This simply duplicates my main IDE window. Now I can move that window to my screen. That way I can use another perspective in that new window, or just edit a different set of sources files there.

Another great usage of a separate eclipse IDE window is using it to debug a multicore device or multiple boards the same time: you have everything visible without the need to switch views.

That reminds me about another frequent question I receive: how to edit the same source file on different lines the ‘same’ time? There is a solution for this: I use the menu Window > New Editor. Alternatively I use the context menu on the tab of the source file:

Context menu to create a new editor for a source file

Now you have a second instance of my source file. Drag&Drop the tab to the side of the editor view (or the bottom) and you can have a side by side:

Side-by-side view of editor windows with the same source

Ok, having a separate eclipse IDE window is a great thing. But what if I just want to have a single view on my other monitor (instead the whole IDE)? Yes, that’s possible :-). It is simple not that easy to find. I expected this for the editor view. But darn, this is not in the eclipse version of MCU10.2. Not yet. The good news is: the next eclipse release supports detached editor windows.

But you there is support for it in the other CodeWarrior/eclipse views. Use the context menu on the view tab to detach the view:

Detached menu item for views

This transforms the view into a detached window which can be freely moved around: that way I can pick and choose the views I want to move to my other screen:

Detached Console View

To get the window back to its IDE tiling place, simply select the menu again and remove the detached flag:

Select the menu again to remove the detached status

Happy multi-screening 🙂