Installing Eclipse

About Eclipse Versions

Note: some versions of Eclipse work well, others,.... not so much.  Below is a table of known good/useful versions of Eclipse, the Scala IDE package, and SBT.

Please add to this table. Newer information at the top please.

Follow the instructions below for specific platforms.

Windows:

1. Go to: http://www.eclipse.org/
2. You will be installing Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers or Eclipse for Java Developers.  Select the download link appropriate for your version of Windows (32-bit vs. 64-bit).
3. Select the appropriate mirror and Save the file to your local machine making note of the location (default location is Downloads for Windows 7).
4. At this point you should have a Zip archive containing the Eclipse files.  Take note of where this file was saved as we will need it after we've installed 7-Zip.
   1. Please note that the Eclipse installation instructions recommend using 7-Zip to extract Eclipse.
   2. "Note that there is a known problem with the built-in decompression utility on all current versions of Windows. We recommend that you use a more robust decompression utility such as the open source 7zip when decompressing an Eclipse download. Some people report success when initially decompressing Eclipse into a root directory (e.g. c:\) and then moving it to a more appropriate home (e.g. c:\Program Files\Eclipse)"
5. Download 7-Zip from http://www.7-zip.org/ for your appropriate version of Windows (x86 32-bit vs x64 64-bit).
6. When the download has completed, run the executable.
7. A dialog should pop-up.  Follow the prompts to complete installation.
8. Now that we have 7-Zip, we need to navigate to the location where the Eclipse zip file was saved.
9. Right-click the Eclipse zip file Select 7-Zip -> Extract Here
10. Your current directory should now contain a folder titled "eclipse".  You may copy this folder to a more convenient location such as "C:\Program Files\Eclipse" or another location of your choosing.
11. Once you're satisfied with the location of your "eclipse" folder, open it.
12. Right-click the eclipse application and select Pin to Start Menu.  OR select Create Shortcut and place the shortcut on your Desktop.
13. You should now be able to run Eclipse from your Start Menu or Desktop.

Linux:

Go to: http://www.eclipse.org/

You will be installing Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers or Eclipse for Java Developers.  Select the download link appropriate for your version of Linux (32-bit vs. 64-bit)

Select the appropriate mirror and Save the file to your local machine making note of the location.

Open a Terminal and cd to the location where you saved the file.

Type the following command in the Terminal (substitute the file name you downloaded for the example here):

$ tar -zxvf eclipse-jee-indigo-SR2-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz

This will extract the 'eclipse' folder to this location.

If you are not happy with this location (in my case it's in Downloads) you can move it to a more convenient location

$ cd ~
$ mkdir Programs
$ mv Downloads/eclipse Programs

The above just creates a directory called Programs in your Home and moves the 'eclipse' folder and its contents to this new location.

We need to establish what our HOME directory is by entering the following into the Terminal:

$ echo $HOME

The value returned back in my case is "/home/developer".  In your case it would be "home/<username>". 

Now we need to make it convenient to execute Eclipse.

$ su
$ touch /usr/bin/eclipse
$ chmod 755 /usr/bin/eclipse
$ vi /usr/bin/eclipse

In the next step, ECLIPSE_HOME will be "HOME/Programs/eclipse".

Enter the following into the file:

#!/bin/bash
export ECLIPSE_HOME="/home/developer/Programs/eclipse"
$ECLIPSE_HOME/eclipse $*

Save the file.

Back in the terminal, enter the following:

$ ln -s /usr/bin/eclipse /bin/eclipse
$ vi /usr/share/applications/eclipse.desktop

Enter the following into the file:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Eclipse
Comment=Eclipse IDE
Exec=eclipse
Icon=/home/developer/Programs/eclipse/icon.xpm
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=GNOME;Application;Development;
StartupNotify=true

The above simply creates a shortcut in Applications that you can use rather than always typing 'eclipse' in the Terminal to start Eclipse.  Save the file.

Back in the Terminal, cd to the eclipse directory:

$ cd ~/Programs/eclipse
$ chown -R developer:developer configuration/
$ exit

The above simply prevents the "Invalid Configuration Location" error.

At this point, you have two ways to start Eclipse.  Applications -> Eclipse Shortcut or you can simply type 'eclipse' in the Terminal.