Installing Eclipse

The Eclipse Development Environment is distributed via a .zip file you can expand onto your computer.  Unlike other installers you might be used to, Eclipse does not require administrator privileges or write in the Windows registry.  The .zip file is over 103 MB in size so you really don't want to download it over a dialup modem.  Although I am no expert with Eclipse, I find it an incredible tool for Java development.  Trust me, it will greatly simplify your experience in this class, as it integrates with Tomcat seamlessly.  Although there might be a newer version of Eclipse, I would like to request that you stick with the version I am distributing, as I am also distributing various plugins that have yet to be ported over to 3.1 Eclipse platform.

Eclipse 3.1 requires atleast a Java JRE version 1.4.2 (or higher) so you will want to be sure to follow the instructions elsewhere to get Java installed properly before completing the steps below.  For students in CS 83, Eclipse will also launch Tomcat and, therefore, have the additional requirement that a full Java JDK version 1.4.2 (or higher) be installed on your machine.

Installation steps to complete:

  1. Acquire the eclipse-SDK-3.1-win32.zip file.  You can find this file on the SMC server titan\data\stahl_howard, as well as burned on the cd I have made for this class or you may navigate to http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/eclipse/downloads/drops/R-3.1-200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-win32.zip
  2. Unzip into a directory of your choosing. 
    (These directions will assume that you expanded it into the directory c:\eclipse)
  3. Optionally, create a shortcut to launch eclipse by creating a shortcut to the file c:\eclipse\eclipse.exe
  4. The first time you launch Eclipse you can expect to be prompted for a workspace location.  This directory will be used by Eclipse to store your source and compiled Java code.  You can see from the diagram below that I specified c:\temp because that is a directory where students have write-priviledge on the school lab computers.
     
  5. After whirling a while, Eclipse will show you its Welcome Screen which you can dismiss by clicking on the X shown below.
     

Congratulation!  You have installed Eclipse.  Please move on now to the Eclipse Tutorial available by clicking here.