Celebrating 18 Years of Eclipse 4diac

Today marks the 18th anniversary of Eclipse 4diac. On July 23rd, 2007, we presented 4diac for the very first time at a workshop at the IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN).

Throwback to INDIN 2007: The very first public presentation of 4diac.

What began as an academic prototype has, over the years, grown into a mature, open-source framework for distributed industrial automation based on IEC 61499.

Then and Now

To highlight how far we’ve come, here’s a comparison of the very first 4diac IDE version and the current release:

Since that first presentation, 4diac has made significant progress:

• In 2007, we released the first version under the name 4diac.

• In 2010, 4diac FORTE became one of the first IEC 61499 runtimes ported to multiple embedded platforms.

• In 2015, the project officially joined the Eclipse Foundation as Eclipse 4diac.

• In 2021, we introduced the redesigned 4diac IDE with better usability and performance..

• This year, we will release version 3.0, featuring a modernized UI, largely extended Structured Text support, a much faster 4diac FORTE, and support for new APIs such as open62541 1.4.

Beyond technical development, our community has grown steadily. Contributors from academia, industry, and research have helped shape Eclipse 4diac into a reliable and versatile toolchain. The project has been used in teaching, prototyping, and even in production systems across the world.

Looking ahead, we’re continuing to push forward. This includes:

• Ongoing work on improving graphical editing and debugging capabilities

• A focus on interoperability with other technologies and standards

• Preparing for the 4 Days of Eclipse 4diac Winter School in February 2026

A big thank you goes out to everyone who contributed over the years—whether through code, ideas, documentation, or testing. Your support made this journey possible.

Do you have memories from using Eclipse 4diac? Feel free to share them with us on LinkedIn.

Here’s to the next chapter!

This is a transcription of the article published by the Eclipse 4diac on its official website.