Eclipse

The Eclipse IDE is available via the package eclipse-sdk. This package is the "standard" Eclipse distribution which includes the Eclipse platform itself, Eclipse plugin development tools, and Eclipse's Java Development Tools (JDT). Other tools and addons including IDEs for C++, PHP, Ruby and others can be easily obtained through Eclipse's Update and Addon manager which is accessible from the help menu.

What is Eclipse?
Eclipse is a free software / open source platform-independent software framework for delivering what the project calls "rich-client applications", as opposed to "thin client" browser-based applications. So far this framework has typically been used to develop IDEs (Integrated Development Environments), such as the Java IDE called Java Development Toolkit (JDT) and compiler that comes as part of Eclipse (and which are also used to develop Eclipse itself). However, it can be used for other types of client application as well.

Eclipse series

 * Eclipse 3.5.1 (Galileo) is the current stable release in portage.
 * Eclipse 3.6.0, 3.6.1 (Helios) is available as overlay (dustin).
 * Eclipse 3.6.2 (Helios) is available as overlay (dustin) or ebuild for your local overlay.
 * All current releases depend on JDK 1.6. If you have problems relating to this (or other java dependencies), information on the Gentoo site describes how to configure Java correctly and how to update Java.
 * If you build swt with xulrunner support, you need to define the MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME environment variable for the eclipse browser to work properly . The swt package messages will specify what it needs to be set to.

Eclipse 3.3

 * Configuration settings are now in /etc/eclipserc as well as ~/.gentoo/eclipserc. These plain Bash files are sourced when Eclipse is started. Currently they allow you to tweak memory settings. This is the current recommended Gentoo-way of changing the Eclipse startup option. The normal way, editing an eclipse.ini file, has been abandoned.


 * The Eclipse-3.3 ebuild has seen major changes from the previous 3.2 version. It now uses almost only Gentoo Java dependencies, as opposed to using only the Eclipse bundled jars. A few jars remain bundled, and this will be worked on in the future.

Extensions in Eclipse
Eclipse is extended through features and plugins. Features are a collection of one or more plugins. The term extension is used as an abstraction over both, when the difference is irrelevant.

Installing new extensions
This depends on the version of Eclipse. For 3.4 (not 3.4.1, found in the java-overlay overlay), the old Update Manager must be enabled. Enable it under Window > Preferences > General > Capabilities. In any case, updates are found under Help > Software Updates. Plugins and features are installed to the home directory.

Reporting bugs

 * Eclipse is currently maintained by Elvanör (elvanorATgentoo.org), and by the Java herd in general.
 * If you have problems, try contacting us on #gentoo-java on irc.freenode.net or subscribe and mail your woes to gentoo-java@lists.gentoo.org.
 * If you think you've found a bug, report it through bugs.gentoo.org. Eclipse can be used in such a variety of situations that we cannot discover all the problems ourselves. Thus bug reports are very valuable, especially if the bug can be easily reproduced thanks to your input.

If you decide to report a bug upstream with the Eclipse project, you should make certain that:


 * Your entire system is built with safe CFLAGS. This means you can only use -O2, -O3 and -march=x, -mcpu=x as optimization CFLAGS. In particular, you cannot use -fomit-frame-pointer, as this makes debugging JVM crashes impossible.
 * You have verified that it is not a Gentoo-specific problem. Join #gentoo-java and ask, or mail gentoo-java@lists.gentoo.org</tt>.

Problems and Solutions
Eclipse is slow, or very unstable (Out of memory crashes)

This most likely means that the memory allowed to Eclipse must be increased. Edit /etc/eclipserc</tt> and change some variables. This is especially needed if on amd64, or with a lot of Eclipse plugins. Note that if given enough RAM, Eclipse should not be slow. However, it will always be slower on amd64 than on x86 until Sun (or OpenJDK) provides a 64-bit client mode JVM. Everything is run in server mode, which is not adapted to applications such as Eclipse. (still ?)

Printing does not work in Eclipse

Rebuild swt with the cairo USE flag set.

Eclipse hits 100% CPU usage and freezes on start-up with GTK GUI

Tune down your CFLAGS. In particular, do not use -msse and/or -msse2.

Javadoc Tooltip

To get the Javadoc Tooltips, go to Window > Preferences > Java > Installed JREs > edit, mark rt.jar</tt> and attach the source: /opt/sun-jdk- /share/src.zip</tt>.

Docs error 

Eclipse assumes you have Mozilla installed. I couldn't find a way (config file or such) to change the default so I simply created a symbolic link.


 * 1) cd /usr/bin
 * 2) ln -s opera mozilla