Eclipse Ganymede

Eclipse Ganymede SR1 was recently released. Ganymede is the simultaneous release of Eclipse 3.4 (and SR1 updates this to 3.4.1) and a bundle of Eclipse projects. InfoQ have a good article giving the low-down. Two interesting developments include the inclusion of 64-bit builds, and the use of multiple cores in compilation.

I've been using Eclipse for several years now, and always find it takes a little while to get everything configured just how you want it. In particular, a lot of the most useful plugins are not bundled with Eclipse, so you need to spend some time assembling them together.

Configuration of Eclipse

The following recipe gives describes my build of Eclipse. Any suggestions for how this can be improved are appreciated as always. The instructions are for Windows - extrapolate as required.

1. Download eclipse-SDK-3.4.1-win32-x86_64.zip for 64-bit Windows, and eclipse-SDK-3.4.1-win32.zip for 32-bit Windows.

2. Make a folder for Eclipse somewhere called 'Eclipse', and unzip the Eclipse SDK zip file to the parent folder. I typically create c:\Java\Eclipse and unzip to c:\Java

3. Create a shortcut to Eclipse, for example:

C:\Java\Eclipse\eclipse.exe -clean -vm "C:\Java\JSE6\bin" -vmargs –Xmx2048m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m

(where the ‘vm’ argument points to your appropriate Java runtime with Eclipse – this should be at least version 5.0 and should be 32-bit or 64-bit as appropriate).

NB. Best practice is to point to a JDK rather than a JRE location.

4. Next, search for new features using the Ganymede Updates (with "Show the latest version" selected).

Pick the appropriate platform features - you can safely select everything. Typical selection could be Database Development, Enabling Features, Graphical Editors and Frameworks, Java Development, Models and Model Development, Testing and Performance and Web and JEE Development.

5. After restarting again, the following update sites can be used to add AspectJ Developer Tools, SvnKit, SubClipse, M2 Eclipse, CollabNet Merge Client, QuantumDB, SpringIDE, JBoss Tools and Mylyn:

Mylyn http://download.eclipse.org/tools/mylyn/update/e3.4 (except SDK)
Mylyn Extras http://download.eclipse.org/tools/mylyn/update/extras (except SDK)
           then restart

AJDT http://download.eclipse.org/tools/ajdt/34/update (except Source Code)
SvnKit http://eclipse.svnkit.com/1.2.x/ 
           then restart

SubClipse http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.4.x (except JNA Library and SVNKit Library)
M2 Eclipse (Dev) http://m2eclipse.sonatype.org/update-dev/
           then restart

QuantumDB http://quantum.sourceforge.net/update-site
SpringIDE http://dist.springframework.org/release/IDE
           then restart

JBoss Tools (Beta) http://download.jboss.org/jbosstools/updates/development/ (only Hibernate Tools, JBossAS Tools, RichFaces VPE Feature, SeamTools Feature and Mozilla Libraries)
           then restart

6. Other interesting plugins you might want to consider could include:

Checkstyle http://eclipse-cs.sourceforge.net/update/
LuntClipse http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=113344&package_id=163970
LogWatcher http://graysky.sourceforge.net/
Color Editor http://www.gstaff.org/colorEditor/download.html

7. A number of plugins are best installed by hand:

Download Log4E Free / Pro from http://log4e.jayefem.de/index.php/Download (I used de.jayefem.log4e_free_1.3.2.zip) and extract it to the Eclipse/dropins directory.
Download Azzurri Clay from http://www.azzurri.jp/en/software/clay/index.jsp (I used jp.azzurri.clay.core_1.4.2.bin.dist.20080709.zip) and extract it to the Eclipse/dropins directory.
Download JavaCC plugin version 1.5.12 or greater from http://perso.wanadoo.fr/eclipse_javacc/ (I used EclipseJavaCC-1.5.13.zip) and extract it to the Eclipse/dropins directory and then restart Eclipse.
Download Jar Class Finder version 2.1.0 from http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/jarclassfinder/download and copy the Jar to the Eclipse/dropins/plugins subdirectory.
Download Tarlog Plugin 1.2.3 from http://code.google.com/p/tarlog-plugins/ (I used tarlog.eclipse.plugins_1.2.3.jar) and copy the Jar to the Eclipse/dropins/plugins subdirectory.

8. Configure eclipse.ini, for example, with the following:

-startup 
plugins\org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.0.101.R34x_v20080819.jar
--launcher.library
plugins\org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_64_1.0.101.R34x_v20080731
-showsplash 
org.eclipse.platform
--launcher.XXMaxPermSize 
256m
-vmargs
-Xms40m
-Xmx2048m

Update on Saturday, November 8, 2008 at 2:07PM by Chris

I've updated the original article with configuration of Ganymede SR1 (i.e. Eclipse 3.4.1). This time around, only M2Eclipse and JBoss Tools are using releases that are not tagged as stable. I've replaced the combination of EasyExplore and Trajano Eclipse Platform Extensions with Tarlog, an Eclipse plugin that provides capabilities equivalent to the shell integration of both the former plugins.

Comments

[Michał]

Did you manage to actually run Hibernate Tools with Ganymede? I'm getting exceptions, as do other people described here: http://forum.hibernate.org/viewtopic.php?p=2389275

[Chris]

Michal, thanks for this information. Quite a few operations in the Hibernate Tools perspective result in this error. I've updated the comments. I also tried the current nightly build from which should be targetted at Ganymede (see http://lists.jboss.org/pipermail/jboss-user/2008-May/120212.html), but this is not working either (for me at least) presently. I've updated the original post to reflect your feedback.

[Chris]

JBoss Tools (alpha) can now be installed to Ganymede. I've updated the post to reflect this.

[Luis Monteo]

I need jp.azzurri.clay.core_1.4.2.bin.dist.20080709.zip file . please I want to model databases in eclipse send me this plugins to my email thanks