Downloading Eclipse in Java

Printer Quick Response Code in Java Downloading Eclipse

To download Eclipse, visit wwweclipseorg As with all Web sites, this site s structure is likely to change between my writing and your reading Eclipse For Dummies Anyway, the last time I looked, this Web site s home page had plenty of links to the Eclipse download page The download page lists a zillion mirror sites, and each mirror site contains (more or less) the latest release-for-thepublic version of Eclipse Many software providers use a main-site/mirror-site scheme The main site contains the official versions of all files Each mirror site contains copies of the main site s files A typical mirror site updates its copies every few hours, or every few days When you download from a mirror site, you do a good deed (You avoid placing a burden on the main site s server) Some mirror sites have visitor-friendly Web pages; others don t If you reach a site whose interface isn t comfortable for you, then backtrack and try another site Eventually, you ll find a site that you can navigate reasonably well Yes, this is another warning! Eclipse is hot stuff Many Eclipse download sites are overloaded with traffic If you get no response when you click links, please don t be discouraged Try a different mirror site, try a different time of day, or try clicking the same link a second time Take comfort in the fact that you re in good company Everybody, everywhere wants to download Eclipse After picking a mirror site, you may have a choice of several things to download You can get release builds, stable builds, nightly builds, legacy versions, and so on Because you re reading Eclipse For Dummies (and not Eclipse For

People Who Already Know Everything about Eclipse), I assume that you don t want last night s hot-off-the-press, still-full-of-bugs build Instead, you want the latest regular release So click the link leading to the latest Eclipse release After clicking the link, you may see a list of operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and so on) You may also see alternative download links (http versus ftp) You may even see md5 checksum links, and links to various other things (things like the RCP Runtime Binary and the Platform SDK things that don t concern a new Eclipse user) Click the http or ftp link corresponding to your computer s operating system Clicking either link starts up the usual download process on your computer Save the file that you download to a safe place on your hard drive, and then proceed to this book s next fun-filled section

Unlike many other pieces of software, Eclipse doesn t come with a fancy installation routine That s actually a good thing Eclipse doesn t need to have a fancy installation routine Eclipse doesn t tangle itself up with the rest of your system Eclipse is just an innocent bunch of files, sitting harmlessly on your hard drive If you re used to things such as Windows DLLs, registry changes, VB runtime libraries, and other unpleasant debris, then installing Eclipse is a breath of fresh air To install Eclipse, you just unzip the downloaded file That s all you do You can use WinZip, unzip, the Windows XP extraction wizard, or anything else that sucks material from ZIP files One way or another, the extracted stuff ends up in a directory named (lowercase letter e) eclipse The new eclipse directory contains everything you need to start running the Eclipse program Here are some specific tips for your operating system: Microsoft Windows: If you re a Windows user, you may be tempted to extract Eclipse into the Program Files directory While that s not a terrible idea, it may eventually lead to trouble Some Java tools don t work in directories whose names contain blank spaces UNIX or Linux: After unzipping the Eclipse download, I normally don t change any file permissions The eclipse executable comes with permissions rwxr-xr-x With all these xs, anyone logged on to the computer can run Eclipse If you re familiar with UNIX or Linux, and you know all about permissions, you may want to change these permission settings But if you don t know what rwxr-xr-x means, it doesn t matter You re probably okay with things as they are