Integrated Development Environments

Today We Will: Discuss what IDE’s are used for Go over the Eclipse IDE: –What is Eclipse? –How to install and set it up –Basic functionality of the application

What is an IDE? IDE stands for integrated development environment. They are tools used by system developers (including software engineers) to assist them in the various phases of system development.

Benefits of Using an IDE IDE’s have many features that make system development easier like: –Editors with: built-in debuggers automatic error detection varying views of the code automatic code completion –Built-in documentation –Built-in connections to external tools: SCR tools testing tools deployment tools.

What is Eclipse? The developers of Eclipse describe the application this way: “Eclipse is an open platform for tool integration built by an open community of tool providers. Operating under a open source paradigm, with a common public license that provides royalty free source code and world wide redistribution rights, the eclipse platform provides tool developers with ultimate flexibility and control over their software technology.” What does this mean?

What is Eclipse? Eclipse is an open-source tool which means that developers have access to the source code for the application. This allows these developers to build plug-in tools that work seamlessly with this platform. For example, a company called Omondo built a plug-in tool for Eclipse that does UML modeling. We will use this tool later. Software engineers use the IDE and many of its built-in tools. Eclipse is an excellent IDE and is free to the developer.

Who’s Developing These Tools for Eclipse? All of these industry leaders have commited to building Eclipse Platform compatible products: –Borland, IBM, MERANT, QNX Software Systems, Rational Software, Red Hat, SuSE, TogetherSoft, Webgain 2, Serena, Sybase and Fujitsu In recent months more than 35 new offerings powered by eclipse have been released and more than 175 tool vendors are delivering tools for the eclipse platform to community participants from over 100 countries.

Installing the Eclipse Application Download and install –Go to –Download the latest release (currently that is 2.0.2). Choose the one for your operating system. –Unzip the download and extract to a target directory. –To run the application, click on eclipse.exe.

Installing the Eclipse Application Set up the correct JRE: –Note: you must have a JVM installed on your machine. You should have JDK –Go to Window-Preferences. –Click on Java in the left-hand window. –Click on Installed JRE’s. –Click Add and browse for the jre e.g. C:\Program Files\Java\j2re1.4.1_01

Installing the Eclipse Application Set up a project: –To work with Java in Eclipse, you first need to set up a project. Go to file-new Project. Click Java in the left-hand window and click Java Project in the right-hand window. Then click Next. Type in a project name and click finish. Keep the use default box checked.

Installing the Eclipse Application Point to necessary external jar’s. –Go to Window-Preferences. –Click on Java in the left-hand window. –Click on Classpath Variables. –Click New and browse for the jar.

Basic Functionality Using the editor to write Java programs –Click on your new project. –Go to file-new-class. –Type in a class name and fill in the necessary parameters. –In the editor window, type in the Java code. –To compile it go to file-save. Saving the code automatically causes it to compile. –Fix all errors. –To run the application, go to Run-Run (or click menu item). –Make sure Java application is highlighted. –Click New and hit Run. You will see the output in the console window.