Installing Eclipse and Its Plug-ins (FB, Jupiter, Subclipse)

This article documents the procedure of setting up Eclipse to use the following plug-ins:

• Flex Builder plug-in 3.0.2 (i.e., FB3_WWEJ_Plugin.exe)
• Jupiter plug-in 3.4.1.1 (i.e., edu.hawaii.ics.csdl.jupiter_3.4.1.1.jar)
  
• Subclipse plug-in
  

To read more about these plug-ins, refer to the following documents:

• Download Adobe Flex BuildIner 3
  
• jupiter-eclipse-plugin
• Install Subclipse in Eclipse 3.x
  

The Eclipse platform we use is "Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers" and you can download it from here. Our version is 3.4.1.

Follow these steps to install Eclipse and its plug-ins:

1. Install Eclipse by unzipping the archive to a folder, say E:\MyApplications.
2. Click on E:\MyApplications\eclipse\eclipse.exe to start Eclipse.
3. Install Flex Builder plug-in by clicking on FB3_WWEJ_Plugin.exe
• Adobe Flex Builder 3 Installer will be launched.
• Choose an install folder for Flex Builder (e.g., E:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3 Plug-in)
  
• Choose an Existing Eclipse Folder (e.g., E:\MyApplications\eclipse)
• If you already have Flash Player installed, you can skip additional installations
• Close all instances of Eclipse or Flex Builder before proceed with the installation
  
• If you install the plug-in on a machine that already has a registered Flex Builder installation, it will be automatically registered. Otherwise, you need to register.
  
4. Install Jupiter plug-in by copying its jar file into the plugins directory of Eclipse (e.g., E:\MyApplications\eclipse\plugins).
5. Install the Subclipse plug-in
• In Eclipse, open Help -> Software Updates
• Software Updates and Add-ons wizard will be launched
• If you try to install the Subclipse plug-in (or any Eclipse plug-in) from the intranet, you'll need to set the Proxy in Eclipse first. You do that in Window->Preferences->General->Network Connectivity.
• Click on Available Software tab
• Click on Add Site button
• Add the following location: http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.4.x
• Expand http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.4.x site
• Select "Subclipse" and "JavaHL Adapter"and then click on "Install" button

As you might have noticed, there are 3 different ways of installing Eclipse plug-ins:

1. Use InstallAnywhere installer
2. Copy jar file into plugins directory
3. Use Eclipse's Software Update

Final Words

When features and plug-ins are manually installed on top of an Eclipse-based product install located on a FAT file system that has already been run at least once, the product must be explicitly restarted with -clean. That is,

eclipse.exe -clean

Learn More

1. Eclipse IDE Tutorial