Installing Eclipse

So you want to work on open source projects, or maybe do some "work" with a kick ass IDE. Here's how I go about doing it!

First, I download the latest Eclipse version. If we're at, um, around an M4 release, I'll generally opt for that. I like to live on the edge, and really, these days, it's where it's at.

Everything is evolving really fast. I love it, although it probably pisses some people off. Eh.

Anyways: I like the package builds-- what I do most of the time is related to the interweb, so I go with the Java EE build, which comes with most everything I need. Mylyn, the Web whatnots, Data Tools... great stuff!

So, anyways, I download (http://phoenix.eclipse.org/packages/, currently) the Eclipse install I want, and then I fire it up, and add any plugins that don't come with it. For me that's a custom compiled "bleeding edge" version of Subclipse, and CFEclipse. That's it, these days. Oh, and Remote Target Management (for the Remote System Explorer, which does SFTP, FTP, Shells, and other cool things). Used to do QuantumDB, JSEclipse, SFTP...

I point it at a temporary workspace first, while installing plugins, and then I switch it to my "main" workspace (I've recently started using multiple workspaces-- it's easy, and keeps stuff faaaast!).

Here is the command I use to start up eclipse with some memory and aggressive garbage collection (yes, you can tune Eclipse just like CF, for what you're doing):

./eclipse3.4M6/eclipse -data Documents/workspace-cfe -clean -vmargs -Xverify:none -XX:+UseParallelGC -XX:PermSize=64M -XX:MaxNewSize=64M -XX:NewSize=64M -Xmx512m -Xms512m

docs about GC: http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/TuneVMGarbageCollection

I'll generally have one eclipse directory, with the various versions within, and use a symlink or virtual folder to point at my "default" install, and various scripts for starting up specific workspaces. That line above starts up my CFE specific workspace.

Generally, you'll only start to need multiple workspaces if you're working with upwards of 30 or so /heavy duty/ projects. Up until recently, I probably had like 30 little website projects, 9 honking website applications, and the sources for like 20 open source projects. Mylyn makes stuff manageable, as do working sets.

Things were fine, which is fucking super impressive, you know? Seriously, I'd even leave them all open!

Every once in a while crap goes down tho, and a full workspace rebuild took minutes. Plus, searching /everything/ was a PITA. Just freaking oodles of files. Oodles.

So now I've got stuff broke up better. As you'll see in the next entry, where I talk about how I'm working on a DLTK version of CFE.

Mostly this is because, as I said earlier, I'm a mix-master. I'll check out the sources for 5 or 6 related projects while working on one project, since, to be honest, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants anyways.

See, I don't really know /why/ what I'm doing does what it does-- sure, I'm sorta do, perhaps, and it gets fleshed out as I go, but, seriously, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants, as mentioned previously.

Years of playing with random stuff gives me a certain spidy-sense, I reckon, but there is a lot that is a mystery to me, yet that I take advantage of anyways.

Bah. Talking eclipse install here, right? I'll save that other stuff for "how I guess at what to do" or a similarly titled next post.

So, with the new 3.4 update manager, equinox p2, having bundles of plugins is easy. I used to do the whole: create eclipse plugin extension folders for various things, to keep say, eclipse3.3-only plugins in one folder, and eclipse 3.2 and 3.3 plugins in another, or WTP in one, etc.

I stopped doing that a while ago tho... just got things to such a smooth process, I guess, that it was more trouble than it was worth.

Feel free to look into it tho, if you like to try out various plugins without having to hunt through the default giant eclipse plugin folder (for manual un-install/install, mostly).

If you're running a mac, the command line command I posted above will work. You need to edit (I think) a plist file if you want to be able to just click on the icon and have configuration settings work (the .ini file doesn't work on mac).

Since I'm running a macbook now, I created a ec.app folder, with Contents/MacOS/ folders within, and created a script called ec, which contained the command line stuff, so I can click on the icon... pretty retarded, really, because you can just click on script files too (if you tell Finder to open them with the Terminal app), but hey...

[note to self: see if a one-liner like:] echo thatStatCommand > ec.app/Contents/MacOS/ec chmod +x ec.app/Contents/MacOS/ec [would work]

anywaze... wow... guess that's about it, unless folks think of more eclipse questions, or I think of some more tips... look into mylyn, for sure, peoples... yup... that... is.. all... for... no-ow ow ow ow owww w w.