Chapter 2. Eclipse: A modulare development environment

2.1. Installation

With Eclipse, IBM delivered a real masterpiece. Due to its modular design, Eclipse can be extended at will and thus be adapted to many different needs. As an open source product, it has a large popularity, especially due to the particularly large number of extensions. One can find a „plugin“^[1], which makes life easier for all programming languages and typical developer`s task.

Since Eclipse is written in Java, it comes with full strengths especially in the Java environment where most plugins are also available.

2.1. Installation

Eclipse can be unpacked simply from archives and be installed in any path (with Windows e.g. „C:\Programme\Eclipse“) with Linux (Suse 8,1) in „/opt/eclipse“. Important for Suse 8.1: The library gtk 2,0 must be installed.

All plugins are in the plugins directory in the installation directory and herein the individual packages with reverse domain names as directories (e.g. org.eclipse.jdt… ).

In order to install further plugins, you only need to unpack them in the directory hierarchy and restart Eclipse. New plugins will automatically be recognized and installation will be completed by Eclipse if nessecary.

Further information on Eclipse can be found at „Java WebApplications mit Eclipse“.

Footnotes

^[1]You can find a list of many Eclipse plugins at http://eclipse-plugins.2y.net/eclipse/index.jsp or in section 13.1.1

WebServices with Java, Axis, XDoclet and Eclipse