Eclipse Java Development Tools

As an Eclipse committer on Acceleo, I am using Eclipse all the time and I have now learned various tips and tricks for Eclipse. During the last couple of weeks, I had the opportunity to go back to my old university to teach the future generation of software developers and by being surrounded with newcomers in both Java and the Eclipse ecosystem, I came to realize that I could share some information that I have acquired using Java and Eclipse all day long.

Most of the time, when learning Java development, people are only taught about the language itself and some frameworks but not that much about the tooling. Yet you will spend most of your time developing in Java with an IDE that provides you with tons of features. The Java Development Tools project is one of the best Eclipse-based tools ever built. Thousands of developers from all around the world are using the JDT everyday. Yet most users of the JDT only use a fraction of its true potential. Over the next few weeks, I will detail most of the things I know about Java development in Eclipse. I will assume that the readers know the Java language already as I won’t explain it. Starting slowly in order not to afraid newcomers, I will later move to advanced features and hidden tricks that will be useful even to Java experts.

I will review several phases of the development of a Java application starting with the creation of the project and the development of a basic Java application then I will move on to improving the application with the refactoring tools and how to configure Eclipse to let the JDT handle most of the boring work for you. Finally I will give you tips and tricks to debug your application. If you are coding in Java and if you think you know everything about Java development on Eclipse, think again!

Plan

Create and manage a Java project Code a basic Java application Configure Eclipse to speed up your coding workflow Refactor and run Debug Moving on to the next level!