Installing Eclipse 3.4.2 Walkthrough

Let's walk through installing Eclipse 3.4.2. For this walkthrough we will be using a Mac OS X machine, but the steps will be very similar for Windows. Let's get started.

Background

Eclipse is one of the most popular IDE (Integrated Development Environments) around. We can use it for developing Flex applications (using the Flex Builder plugin) and Java server applications as well.

Prerequisites

You will need Java 5 or greater installed on your machine and configured be in your path. If you are running Mac OS X 10.4 and are up to date, you already have Java 5.

Installing Eclipse

1. In a web browser, head on over to http://www.eclipse.org/.
2. Select the “Download Eclipse” Button on the right
3. Select the “Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers” link for your platform, in this case Mac OS X (Carbon)
4. Select the link to the recommended mirror under "Download eclipse-jee[...] from:".
5. The download prompt will appear. Choose to save the file.
6. The browser will now download eclipse. In Firefox, you are presented with the Download window which looks like this:
7. When the file is complete, the Downloads window will look like this:
8. Let's now unpack eclipse. Using Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), we can simply find the icon on the desktop (assuming your browser put it here) for the package we just downloaded and double click on it.
9. After you double clicked on it, Archive Utility should have launched and produced the following popup:
10. When Archive Utility completes, you should now have a new folder on your desktop named “eclipse”:

    

11. While you could keep this eclipse folder anywhere, you should move it to your /Applications folder so that it becomes /Applications/eclipse. (Before I do so I will rename the folder to eclipse-3.4.2 both to identify this version and to keep it from conflicting with another eclipse installation already on my machine. Since you probably don't have another version of eclipse installed you don't need to perform this extra step).
    
12. Congratulations! You've now installed eclipse.

Testing Your Installation

1. To test your installation, navigate to your install location and launch Eclipse by double clicking on it.
2. Because we're running Mac OS X 10.5 and this file was downloaded from the Internet, Finder presents us with this warning dialog:

   

3. Choose “Open” to continue opening Eclipse. The warning will only appear the first time you launch Eclipse.
4. Eclipse should then start loading, with the following loading panel displayed:
   
5. Next the “Select a workspace” dialog should appear:
   
6. If you don't currently have a workspace, just leave the default. Otherwise choose any other folder in which you want to keep the assorted project files and assets we will be using. Also check the “Use this as the default and do not ask again” checkbox and then hit OK.
   
7. Eclipse will continue loading and should eventually show you the welcome page:
   
8. Great! If you got this far, you have a good Eclipse installation. Now you can get to work installing any other plugins you need.