Learning Java, 4th Edition

Getting Started with Eclipse

Let’s get started. First, you’ll need to install Eclipse. Download the latest version of “Eclipse IDE for Java Developers”. Choose the correct version for your platform. Unpack the ZIP file to a location of your choice and then launch the application.

The first time you run Eclipse, you’ll be prompted to select a workspace. This is a root directory to hold new projects that you create within Eclipse. The default location may be inside the application’s install folder itself, which is probably not what you want. Pick a location and click OK.

Eclipse greets you with the Welcome screen. Close this window by closing the Welcome tab within the application. If you want to come back later and go through the Eclipse tutorials and related help topics, you can get this window back by choosing Help → Welcome.

One last thing before we move on: Eclipse stores all of its configuration information in the configuration folder inside the Eclipse installation directory. If, at any point in this introduction, you feel that things are not right and you want to start from scratch, you can quit the application and remove this folder. You may also wish to remove your workspace items as they hold per-project state. Less drastically, if you wish to reset all of the application windows to their default locations, you can choose Window → Reset Perspective. We’ll talk more about perspectives later.

Importing the Learning Java Examples

Before we talk about the IDE itself, let’s load ...