I also would love to have an IDE (whether Eclipse or a lighter alternative), and I agree that it could help attract more casual developers.
I successfully use VSCode from Microsoft as ide for Genode build and debugging
I have 2 Parallels virtual machines on my Mac as a host where I use vscode One machine is a genode system to debug, another one is a Ubuntu server with build environment for genode (and gdb front end as well)
VSCode support remote work via ssh, so, I have a workspace running from inside build vm with Mac hosted VSCode and iTerm2
This allows me to handle code, compile (via remote make), git integration and even gdb UI for Nova kernel...
No very specific adjustment, just set of options for VSCode .
Debugging a bit more tricky - I have to compile exactly the same fronted 8.2.1 as used in genode 11.19 and place it inside build machine. Both vm connected via named pipe which allows remote debug of target genode vm from build vm with gdb using host (macOS) VSCode
Sincerely, Alexander