Explore the new features of Eclipse V3.1

This tutorial demonstrates many of the new features in Eclipse's latest release V3.1. If you are considering upgrading from a previous release to V3.1, or considering moving from another integrated development environment to ECLIPSE, you will find this tutorial useful. This tutorial can also be a great help if you want to modify your code to take advantage of the latest generation of Java 2 Standard Edition V1.5, which adds many powerful constructs and conveniences to the Java programming language.

Preliminary knowledge

Learn about the learning goals and the best ways to learn this tutorial.

About this tutorial

This tutorial demonstrates many of the new features in Eclipse's latest release V3.1. If you are considering upgrading from a previous release to V3.1, or considering moving from another integrated development environment to ECLIPSE, you will find this tutorial useful. This tutorial can also be a great help if you want to modify your code to take advantage of the latest generation of Java 2 Standard Edition V1.5, which adds many powerful constructs and conveniences to the Java programming language.

Goal

In this tutorial, you will see many of the new features of Eclipse V3.1. You will learn how to install the Eclipse platform and the underlying Java virtual machine (JVM) software, study many of the eclipse V3.1 Innovations, and explore the many examples of new Java development Tools (JDT) that promote development through J2SE V1.5 's new language constructs.

Prerequisite

To better learn this tutorial, you should have experience with Java software development and the creation of code in the IDE. You should also have experience installing software from the command line, setting up Management Shell and system environment variables, such as the Java language's CLASSPATH and the system's PATH. Familiarity with the previous releases of Eclipse is also helpful, but not necessary.

Before you begin, you must install several packages on the UNIX®, Solaris, linux®, Mac OS X, or microsoft®windows® system you are using.

Specifically, a functioning JVM and a copy of the Eclipse V3.1 platform are needed. The following is a complete list of the required software:

J2SE V1.5 Software Development Kit (SDK) (J2se V1.5 also known as Java 2 Platform,standard Edition. ）

J2SE V1.5 Java Runtime Environment (J2RE)

Eclipse V3.1 SDK

System Requirements

Any computer with a JVM should be able to run Eclipse. However, because many of the features described in this article are for J2SE V1.5, it is best for the machine to run this version of Java. Sun Microsystems provides J2SE V1.5 for Solaris, Windows, and Linux. Apple provides J2SE V1.5 for Mac OS X (version 10.4.4). Some other platforms are also supported.

If you do not have j2se V1.5 and Eclipse V3.1 installed, you should ensure that at least 300MB of physical disk space is available before continuing with the installation. There should also be enough memory to run the JVM. In general, more than MB of available physical memory is a prerequisite for running the JVM. The larger the available memory, the higher the performance.

Eclipse Introduction

Over a relatively short period of time, Eclipse has become a popular cornerstone for developing other Ides and developing different applications in many problem areas.

For example, the Ruby development tool is a set of ruby-specific plug-ins that can transform Eclipse into a powerful ruby editor. At the same time, Azureus, a highly rated and widely used Java application, is able to download BitTorrent's torrent (a large collection of files) based on Eclipse's rich client platform (RCP).

Of course, Eclipse is an increasingly powerful, increasingly popular IDE that can write code for many programming languages. Because it has an extensible framework, developers tend to adjust the most cutting-edge development tools for Eclipse alone. Because of its popularity, commercial development tool vendors (such as rational® and Oracle) are now offering products designed specifically for integration with Eclipse.

In addition, Eclipse's management principal,--eclipse Foundation, continues to inject funds into core projects to further extend Eclipse's functionality. For example, the Eclipse test and performance Tools platform (TPTP) project adds testing, performance metrics, and monitoring tools to the core Eclipse platform. Another project, the Eclipse Web tools Platform (WTP) project, adds tools and technologies to help develop WEB-centric applications.

In summary, Eclipse is a platform and umbrella for a large number of tools, which facilitates development, facilitates redevelopment (or refactoring), simplifies porting to multiple platforms (through packages like Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT), and manages the entire software development lifecycle – Monitoring from the first line of code to the production system.