Moving to Eclipse Europa for J2EE programmer
Europa release
With a short delay after Europa release announcement, I’ve moved to it. Thanks to the fact that Eclipse doesn’t require an installation process and can be just unzipped and run, the last few times I got the tuned Eclipse from my co-workers. Those distributions were well-tuned for J2EE development, with all necessary plugins, project checkstyles, attached sources and so on. Seeing as this time nobody around me offered me such a favor, I did everything on my own.
Actually, to develop a J2EE project, you need to install a dozen of plugins (depends on which frameworks are employed) in addition to the bare distribution, so it’s better to have a cheat sheet every time you start this Eclipse tuning campaign. Since I didn’t have such a plan, I used my current Eclipse 3.1 working set as an example.
This time, I wrote some short notes during the installation process, and I’d like to share it here, to have something in the future to stick with.
Download
Firstly, you need to download an appropriate Eclipse distribution. However there is already a bundle for J2EE developer, I was interested in installing everything I want from the scratch. Therefore I went to http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ and downloaded Eclipse Classic distribution for Windows (140 MB). It was extracted to C:\Java\eclipse3.3 directory where I store all Java stuff like IDEs, JDKs, etc. Then, as usually I wanted to create a custom shortcut with extended memory allocation for Eclipse, but suddenly noticed eclipse.ini file. To allow Eclipse allocation of more memory, just edit the eclipse.ini file (increase Xms and Xmx values):
org.eclipse.platform
–launcher.XXMaxPermSize
256m
-vmargs
-Xms256m
-Xmx512m
Web tools
Some general notes. All plugins can be installed in two common ways: through cute Help->Software Updates->Find and Install… and copying all unzipped stuff to ECLIPSE_HOME/plugins directory. Of course I prefer the first option, and every plugin I’ll be installing through this wizard, except of Sysdeo.
By “default plugins” I mean plugins which can be installed through “Europa Discovery Site” (run the mentioned wizard and find it to be accustomed, if not yet).
From the past experience I knew that I was using a WTP (stands for Web Tools Platform) plugin for web development. The problem was that there were no mentioned WTP plugin on the “Europa Discovery Site”. I carried brief investigation and dig out that the main part of that plugin is a WST subproject (the web standard tools subproject).
Steps to reproduce after Help->Software Updates->Find and Install…:
When I checked WST check box, the wizard apparently gave a tip to select all dependent (required by WST) things too. After I installed a WST, the link to WTP update site suddenly appeared (I guess that it was due to WST), and I decided to install it to have a full stack.
Subversion integration
When I installed all useful tools from the Europa repository, I moved to things which update sites have to be added manually. The process is almost the same as when we were updating standard components, the only difference is the update site where the plugin is stored. We need to add http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.2.x as a New Remote Site…
Tomcat launcher
The simplest and the most valuable plugin for Eclipse invoking I ever used is a Sysdeo Tomcat launcher. Download the archive and install according to Installation section steps. Here, the unzipped archive should be placed manually to the ECLIPSE_HOME/plugins directory.
Useful tools
As you know how to install plugins, I’ll mention only links to update site:
- http://eclipse-cs.sourceforge.net/update – checkstyle plugin, helps to maintain your coding style due to different available code conventions (Sun, Eclipse, your own)
- http://springide.org/updatesite/SpringIDE – Spring related things like bean definitions, xml configuration auto completion
- http://e-p-i-c.sf.net/updates – Perl IDE, just for fun to play with RegExps or to write some admin tools
- http://www.fabioz.com/pydev/updates – PyDev (Python IDE) not to be restricted only by Java world and be more broadminded
- http://eclipse-tools.sourceforge.net/implementors/ – nice Alt+F3 short key usage, allows quick jumps to implementation from interfaces.
Stay tuned!
P.S. I know that saying this phrase is almost as popular as mentioning iPhone in the blog post 
I’m doing the same way.
But why don’t U use JBossTools or Exadel? I think Exadel is very good for JEE-development.
Yeah.. thanks for you effort. But things like that is the reason I switched to NetBeans.
Even an unstable version like Netbeans 6.0 Milestone 9 is much more fun to work with then having to deal with the plugin hell everytime you start a different project.
Next time, you should check out http://www.easyeclipse.org/site/home/
There you have a customized Eclipse for every different kind of developer (standard, enterprise, mobile,..).
2Grandfatha: Actually, the most I like about Eclipse is that I can configure it once and virtually bring with me anywhere I want (home, another HDD, etc.). Almost all plugins are configured applied to entire Eclipse not to workspace (Sysdeo Tomcat for instance).
What’s about Netbeans, I used to work with it a lot during working on my Master’s thesis, and I really loved it outstanding Swing layout (Matisse). It significantly helped me in GUI development. Before that I was superfun
of IntelliJ Idea, and could hardly believe that I would do love Eclipse as I do now
Of course choosing a IDE is a kind of Holy Wars, but I think that the every tool is for theirs purposes.
About already build packs: If I’d like to work with Java and Python (and I like
) there are no such a choice. I tried a site where you can choose which plugins do you want to be included, and then download everything in a single zip. But this distributive had an intrusive update plugin from that site and it was annoying.
2Rauan: Thanks for comments! I don’t JBoss staff because
I’m working with “J2EE without EJB” (Spring, Hibernate, etc) and don’t need a J2EE application server, just Tomcat and lots of libs
Did you consider the Europa j2e bundle?
More to the point, have you ever gotten WST to work, at all? In 3.2 or 3.3, I have it crashing all over the place when I try to establish some ordinary Eclipse project as a dependency of a ‘Dynamic Web Project’.
hi
i’m anew user to eclipse i downloaded Europa 3.3
but the eclipse didnt read class in j2ee like servlet
why?
2mahmoud: I’m not sure what do you mean exactly, but I guess you didn’t include servlet-api.jar into the CLASSPATH of your project. Go to Project->Properties->Java Build Path->Libraries Tab and check that you have something like:
TOMCAT_HOME/common/lib/servlet-api.jar added. When you create a Java project, even if you’re going to develop web application, it means that there are only J2SE libraries (JRE System Library) and all J2EE stuff like JavaMail, Servlets you have to add manually. However, Servlets libraries are added by Sysdeo plugin. If you create a J2EE project you have to specify the J2EE container location, then Eclipse can compile against its libraries.
2 Administrator:
No i’m trying new version of Spring IDE. I think it’s integrated with Europa very well.
Administrator
2Administrator thanx for help