Installing a reasonably recent version of Eclipse on Ubuntu (as its upstream Debian) requires a manual install (downloaded directly from the Eclipse website, or a PPA if one can be found). Compare the latest version on the Eclipse site with the version available in the Ubuntu packages and you see what I mean.
Numerous questions on Askubuntu (e.g. see this answer) and elsewhere on the web (also on this very site) are related to the problems that come with this practice.
I am familiar with the general reasons why the official package repositories are often outdated, but then again we have other software (such as Firefox) to which these rules don't seem to apply -- just compare the latest version released by Mozilla with the version found in the Ubuntu packages.
Now my question: Is it just that the package maintainers put more effort in keeping Firefox up-to date rather than Eclipse or is there a more fundamental (maybe technical) difference in how these programs are packaged?
