Installing Eclipse

TODO: {{#todo:Complete Make sure this is good for OE 4 (11.13.13-10:57->KY+);(11.14.13-16:25->MD+)|Michael Gloff|oe 4,mg,ky,md, Complete}}

Introduction

The instructions below detail the steps to install Eclipse on to a linux PC. Before beginning the installation of Eclipse, it is important to ensure that you have the necessary tools. These tools can either be command line interface (CLI) or graphical programs. This guide provides instructions for both options.

Table 1: Conventions
/download/directory/	Placeholder indicating the directory to which the SDK archive will be downloaded.
/install/directory/	Placeholder indicating the directory to which Eclipse will be extracted. EMAC recommends that this directory be located somewhere within the development user's home directory.

Required Tools

• Web browser or other FTP-aware client
• Archiving tool. Two options are available:
  • Graphical: Ark for KDE, File Roller for GNOME
  • CLI: Tar is standard

Procedure

Install Java

Eclipse is a Java application and as such requires a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to run. Several different JVM providers are available, including OpenJDK and Oracle Java. EMAC recommends installing OpenJDK version 6 or 7 to support the Eclipse 3.6 distribution. If you will not be doing any software development in the Java language, a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is sufficient. Otherwise, you will need to install a Java Development Kit (JDK). See the OpenJDK or Oracle website for installing either the JVM or JDK.

Installation instructions will vary widely depending on the Linux distribution used on the development system. Most distributions, including Ubuntu and Debian, have standard packages available for OpenJDK on the distribution's software repositories. For example, to install OpenJDK6 JRE on Ubuntu or Debian, use the openjdk-6-jre package. For a JDK, the openjdk-6-jdk package can be installed instead of the JRE.

Refer to the documentation for your distribution for more information on how to install Java for your platform.

Once Java has been installed, test the installation by verifying that the java command executes properly and reports the expected version:

developer@ldc:~$ java -version

Install Eclipse

1. Download the Eclipse 3.6 distribution from the EMAC ftp site.
2. Uncompress:
   Using a graphical archiving tool: Uncompress the archive to the chosen development directory. EMAC strongly recommends that /install/directory/ is located somewhere within the developer's home directory. For assistance with extracting the archive, please see the documentation for your archiving tool.
   

Using tar from the CLI: The tar utility has the ability to both compress and extract archives. Here, the x flag is used to tell tar to extract.

developer@ldc:~$ cd /install/directory
developer@ldc:~$ tar xjvf /download/directory/eclipse-3.6-Linux_EMAC-rc0.tar.bz2
developer@ldc:~$ ls

The list of extracted files will be output to the screen. This may take a minute.

...
eclipse/
...

Execute Eclipse

If the "non-Qt version" of the SDK is installed, simply run the eclipse executable in the extracted directory to start Eclipse as shown below:

developer@ldc:~$ /install/directory/eclipse/eclipse

If the "Qt version" of the SDK is installed, Eclipse will need to be run using the emac-eclipse script included in the SDK. For example, if the SDK for the system is located at /install/directory/EMAC-OE-arm-linux-gnueabi-SDK_4.0, Eclipse could be started with the following command:

developer@ldc:~$ /install/directory/EMAC-OE-arm-linux-gnueabi-SDK_4.0/emac_eclipse

Add Eclipse to PATH

Writing /path/to/eclipse/eclipse each time to start Eclipse can become tedious. By adding the path to the Eclipse executable to the system path variable ensures that Eclipse can be started from within any directory on the system.

For "non-Qt version":

developer@ldc:~$ echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/home/developer/eclipse' >> ~/.bashrc

For "Qt version":

developer@ldc:~$ ln -s /home/developer/EMAC-OE-arm-linux-gnueabi-SDK_4.0/emac_eclipse eclipse
developer@ldc:~$ echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/home/developer/EMAC-OE-arm-linux-gnueabi-SDK_4.0' >> ~/.bashrc

Next Steps

After completing the installation, continue by starting Eclipse for the first time.