IDE (Eclipse) installation and Java configuration

Note: below description uses 32-bit Eclipse for Java EE Developers (Juno). Use latest one.

Requirements:

• installed Java JDK, as described in this article.

There is really no big deal here. But in order to follow the rules from initial post I will describe how to "install" Eclipse and configure it to work with previously installed Java JDK.

Step 1: Download the latest Eclipse for Java EE Developers from here.

Step 2: Once we have the Eclipse, unpack the package to C:\Development\Eclipse - and that's all Eclipse is installed :-)

Now it's time for a basis configuration:

Configuration Step 1: After first startup Eclipse will ask us where we want to put the workspace directory. I suggest using this directory C:\Development\Eclipse_Workspace.

Configuration Step 2: After closing welcome screen, Eclipse will stay with default Java EE view perspective. It is OK, now it's the time to configure JDK. go to the Window -> Preferences menu and select:

Configuration Step 3: adding new standard virtual machine (JVM).

Configuration Step 4: just show the location of our previously installed JDK, and give it a name i.e. JDK_7_32bit

Configuration Step 5: switch to the installed JDK.

Configuration Step 6: Configure Eclipse startup parameters.

Search for the eclipse.ini file and at the beginning of the file add these two (yes two!) lines:

-vm

C:\Development\Java7_32bit\bin

By doing this we set the default virtual machine which Eclipse uses. Please note that this is exactly the same Java JDK which was configured in the above step 4 (here in addition we point into directory "bin").

Eclipse is installed and ready for use.