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Installing Eclipse

On some systems, installing Eclipse consists of nothing more than unzipping the download and creating a shortcut to the eclipse program.

Do This Now

On MacOS, open the downloaded DMG file and drag Eclipse.app into /Applications/. * Drag Eclipse.app from /Applications/ to the dock to create a shortcut.

Since it's written in Java, Eclipse needs a Java Runtime Environment - it doesn't include one.

  • You must install a recent JRE and have the java command in your path.

  • If Eclipse doesn't detect a JRE it will prompt you to specify where one is installed.

  • If you have the full Java Software Development Kit installed, Eclipse can do things like step through the library source code during debug.

  • If you have multiple JDKs installed, you can choose which to use for a particular project.

Practice Exercise

The eclipse.ini file, in the Eclipse install directory, has startup options that are passed to eclipse at runtime. On MacOS this file is /Applications/Eclipse.app/Contents/Eclipse/eclipse.ini.

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