Eclipse IDE

Installation

There are generally three ways to install Eclipse:

• Manually from Eclipse Downloads
• Via a package manager (snapcraft, pacman, etc.)
• The Eclipse Installer

Recommended installation locations

On Linux:

• /home/shadylady/tools/eclipse/eclipse-java
• /opt/eclipse (according to Linux#Manualsoftwareinstallation)
• /usr/lib/eclipse  (This is only if installed by an official system package manager)

On Windows:

• C:\ProgramData\eclipse\eclipse-java 

Workspaces

It is not recommended to put your code in a workspace directory. A "workspace" in Eclipse is more akin to isolated or "portable" application settings; not a place to store projects.

Potential workspace locations:

• ~/tools/eclipse/workspace    (Linux)
• ~/.config/eclipse/workspace 
• C:\ProgramData\eclipse\workspace      (Windows)

Configuration

Application memory

Eclipse will perform terribly unless you give it a few GB of memory (RAM).

In the installation folder, find eclipse.ini . Ensure is contains the following JVM options:

-Xms512m
-Xmx2g

The values above are just an example. Scale them to fit your needs. See the official eclipse.ini documentation.

The settings will take effect upon the next restart of Eclipse.

Create a desktop launcher

If Eclipse was installed manually, you'll want to create a desktop application launcher or shortcut. See Linux#Desktopentries.

An example eclipse.desktop  file in Linux you could put in ~/.local/share/applications/:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Eclipse
Comment=Java Development Environment
Icon=eclipse
Exec=eclipse
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Development;IDE;Java;
StartupNotify=true

Disable Welcome menu

To disable the Welcome menu from consuming the full application screen on startup:

• Clear "Always show Welcome at start up" at the bottom right corner of the Welcome menu.

General settings

In Window > Preferences > General:

• Set "Show heap status"

Editor settings

In Window > Preferences > General > Editors

Text Editors:

• Set "Displayed tab width" to "3"
• In "Spelling", clear "Enable spell checking"

Workspace settings

In Window > Preferences > General > Workspace:

• Set "Refresh using native hooks or polling"
• Set "Show full workspace path"
• Set "Text file encoding" to "UTF-8"
• Set "New text file line delimiter" to "Unix"
• In "Build", set "Save automatically before build"

Importing Gradle Projects

See also

Installing/Setting Up Eclipse

Eclipse Development Setup

Importing Gradle projects into Eclipse

Importing Gradle projects into Eclipse

TODO: How to run Gradle tasks with custom options

Learn more