CMPT166 Spring 2008 Eclipse Intro

Starting Eclipse

Eclipse is installed on the computing lab PCs, under the Programs menu, Computing.

Sample project

You may want to create a subdirectory for this course under your Z: "My Documents".
Download this ZIP file containing a small sample Eclipse project. Unpack it in your directory, so that it creates a subdirectory called "Addition".

Import project

In Eclipse, select File / New / Project
Select "Next" (Java Project)
Under "Project name:", type "Addition"
Under "Contents", select "Create project from existing source", and browse to the "Addition" subdirectory where you unpacked the ZIP file.
Select the "Finish" button.

Browse the project

If Eclipse's Java Browser is not visible, make it visible by selecting Window / Open Perspective / Java Browsing.
You should now have a list of projects shown in the top left, and Addition should be one of the packages (probably the only one).
Click on the project name "Addition"; it should show the packages in that project (just the default package).
Click on the default package; it should show the "Addition" class in that package.
Double-click on the "Addition" class, and its source code should show up.

Run the applet

Press the green "Run" button. A dialog box should pop up to configure run configurations.
Select "Java Applet" and press the "New" button.
Press the "Run" button and cross your fingers!
If all goes well, an applet window should pop up. You can play around with the little addition applet.

Creating a new project

You may wish to create a new project for each lab; use File / New / Project.

Installing Java on your own computer

You may also install Sun's Java SE Development Kit on your own computer. You do so at your own risk; no official support will be given for development environments other than Eclipse on the lab PCs.

Go to Sun's Java developer site (not the cheezy consumer java.com site)
What you want is the JDK (Java Development Kit).
You don't need the EE kit for fancy "Web2.0" applications. You don't want just the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) because it doesn't include the javac compiler.
The NetBeans IDE is a cool free editor / development environment (equivalent to Eclipse); you can try it but it's not needed to write and compile Java programs. It is a huge download.
If you don't have an IDE (Eclipse, NetBeans, etc.), you can always use a plain-text editor like Notepad, vim, etc. The compiler is named javac, and the runtime environment to execute a Java class is named java.
The CD included with the Deitel textbook also has the JDK, the NetBeans IDE, a plain-text editor (jEdit), and other application.