Eclipse Base Install
Eclipse provides a transparent development platform between Windows and Linux so that work can be mirrored on both platforms. The vast array of plug-ins covers all of the needs of lsces developments and has provided a stable environment for many years.
Currently the push to DVCS code management by many projects is not well supported in Eclipse. Neither git or hg have fully integrated clients as are available for CVS and SVN. It is now becoming apparent that facilities that Eclipse has provided for many years have addressed at least some of the criticisms of CVS and SVN and so the drive from Eclipse users to improve this area has not been as compelling. Personally I could not understand many of the complaints about the problems with merging and managing branches and it's only recently that I have realized that this is because my own development platform has solved those problems long ago. Incorporating the different methods of working in DVCS into the Eclipse workflow is one of the reasons that simple integration is not quite so easy, since it cuts across the normal work flow.
One of the areas that are still in flux is the the data management tools. Firebird provides a graphical management tool, flamerobin, which runs on both Linux and Windows and provides all of the DBA functions you will probably need, but Eclipse also has a number of cross database tools which allow query development within the IDE. The Clay package was providing a nice SQL modeling interface, but while it's open source version is quite useful, the cost of the license to enable print functions is rather prohibitive, which is a pity given it's nice functionality. Switching back to other methods of handing this area, Eclipse has an integral project providing The Data Tool Platform. Mark Rotteveel has developed the plug-in for accessing Firebird from the base DTP platform, and this uses the Jaybird client to provide a JDBC view of Firebird databases. My installation notes for this are on the Eclipse DB Toolbox
What do you need?
To use Eclipse as an Integrated Development Environment for your target platform you need:
- a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) by Sun,
- Eclipse Platform Runtime Binary,
- plugins for target platform (see list below).
My own prefered base is SUSE Linux, currently running 13.2 alongside 13.1 on the older servers. However some of the elements provided by default on the package manager are not suitable to producing the target IDE and so elements are loaded manually rather than selecting the SUSE option.
Download and install
Java Runtime Environment (JRE)
First we will check if the JRE is already installed on your PC. Therefore open a command prompt and type:
.....>java -version
The result should look like:
java version "1.8.0_72"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_72-b15)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.72-b15, mixed mode)
Eclipse Platform Base
Here we want to download the Eclipse Platform Runtime Binary which can be found at the Eclipse page itself, for the current platform base I have used the release Build 4.5.1. Download the version appropriate to your OS.
Other plug-ins used by default in Eclipse ....
PDT Extension group combines a number of legacy PDT tools such as the Smarty and LESS Editors - Download Site
MecurialEclipse - Currently a problem alloing HG to override the GIT built in support - Download Site
Beyond CVS Eclipse Plug-In integrates Beyond Compare into Eclipse - Download Site
Disable GIT via the >Window>Preferences>Team>Git>Projects and enable subrepositories in Mercurial>Performance This is experimental, but is needed to allow access to the Hg data in each package folder on most of the PHP projects.
Extend support for other development platforms.
Manual Installation (move to separate page)
If the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is not installed on your PC, you can download the JRE from the following Oracle website:
Java SE Downloads (about 30 MB)
Here you will find the "Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 7 Update 51" (that was the current version when I created this tutorial). Download the JRE and save it in the temp directory.
At this point the following files should be downloaded in your temp directory:
| 1. | jre-7u51-windows-i586.exe | |
| 2. | eclipse-platform-3.7.2-win32.zip |
Let's start with the JRE (1). If the JRE was not installed on your PC, start the installer and follow the instructions. After the JRE installation you must unzip the Eclipse file (2). Assumed you had unzipped it on drive C:\, you will see a folder named C:\eclipse. In that folder you will find the eclipse application itself, please create a shortcut on your desktop now. You can use this shortcut later to start the eclispe application.