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Recommended Eclipse Plug-ins

Eclipse Plug-ins

There are hundreds of plug-ins available for the Eclipse IDE. Many are collected at and downloadable from EclipsePlugins site. Plug-ins in each of several of the categories most useful to IST-AS application developers have been evaluated and are listed here. Others are currently being evaluated. If you run across an Eclipse plugin you think might have general application at Berkeley but isn't already included here, please let us know.

Installing plug-ins

Most plug-ins are installed using the Eclipse Update Manager. Details on how the Update Manager works can be found in Eclipse's Help documents, at this location: Help : Help Contents : Workbench User Guide : Tasks : Updating features with the update manager. When installing new plugins, please refer to the documentat one level deeper than the foregoing, in [...] : Installing new features with the update manager.

Some plug-ins are installed using an older method: by copying the appropriate package directory trees to the /plugins directory under your /eclipse directory. The plugins will be automatically installed next time you start Eclipse.

The Update site (used by the first method described above) or the site where a plug-in may be downloaded (second method) are included in the listings above.

Still other plugins are installed from an installation executable (e.g., the Triemax version of Jalopy, described above). In these cases, specfic instructions are included in the notes column of the listings, above.

Eclipse Plug-ins: Recommended

Developers should utilize these plugins as applicable to the Development Platform(s) in which they are working:

Plugin Dev Platform Description Download/Update - Dependencies & Notes
Subclipse All A plugin that adds Subversion integration to the Eclipse IDE.

Update site: http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.0.x

To configure Subclipse so that you can access repositories on a remote Subversion server, you can refer to the document Subclipse Setup on this site.

Note that CVS support is part of the core Eclipse IDE; there is no CVS plug-in per se.
oXygen All An XML editor that supports XML, XSL, TXT, XSD and DTD documents. It offers a powerful code insight that guides the user to write valid XML content, following a DTD or an XML Schema.

Update site: http://oxygenxml.com/InstData/Eclipse/site.xml

A license ($48 - or lower in quantity - for an academic license as of Sept 2006) is required to use oXygen beyond the trial period. For those unable to obtain a license, an open-source XML editor plug-in called X-Men may prove an adequate substitute.
Eclipse SQL Explorer All Eclipse SQL Explorer is a thin SQL client that allows you to query and browse any JDBC compliant database. It supports plugins with specialized functionality for individual databases (Oracle, DB2 and MySQL) and can be extended to include specialized support for other databases.

Update site: http://eclipsesql.sourceforge.net/

Veloeclipse All An HTML/Velocity Editor for Eclipse, based on veloedit (for velocity parsing and outline), including features you'd expect to find in a html editor.

Update site: http://propsorter.sourceforge.net/veloeclipse

RadRails Ruby on Rails RadRails is an integrated development environment for the Ruby on Rails framework. Features include source control, debugging, WEBrick servers, generator wizards, syntax highlighting, data tools, etc.

There are a number of dependencies, and necessary steps to install RadRails, and their necessary sequence, changed when the RadRails project was acquired by a company named Aptana in early 2007. Please follow these steps for a fresh installation of Ruby, RubyGems, Ruby on Rails, Aptana, RDT, and RadRails:

  1. Base Dependencies: Ruby (includes RubyGems) and Ruby on Rails
    • Ruby: download and install current version from http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/ . It is strongly recommended that the default installation location be accepted (e.g., C:\ruby on Windows machines.
    • RubyGems: no action necessary (installed with Ruby as of Ruby 1.8.6). Note that as of June 2007, an older version of RubyGems than is current installs with Ruby 1.8.6. The instructions here are proven using the included RubyGems, but if you need a later version than that included in the Ruby install, visit the RubyGems download page.
    • Rails: open a command window after installing Ruby, then type: gem install rails -y --no-rdoc --no-ri
  2. RadRails and Dependencies
    Note
    The URLs given below are available as of 13 July 2007. They have been tested and found to work for Eclipse v. 3.2 and 3.3. Version 3.3 URLs (same URL, just change the version number at the end) are expected to be released in the near future; use the 3.3 URL for Eclipse 3.3 installations once it is published on the Aptana site.
    • Aptana: The Eclipse plugin for the Aptana IDE must be installed prior to RadRails installation. Update site is http://update.aptana.com/install/3.2/ . Accept defaults to install all Aptana sub-products; if desired, see the vendor-maintained plugin installation instructions .
    • RadRails (includes RDT): Update site is http://update.aptana.com/install/rails/3.2/ Accept defaults to install both RDT and RadRails as a single update; if desired, see the vendor-maintained plugin installation instructions .
    • Installation of the Aptana IDE causes behaviors you may wish to change:
      • XML File Associations: By default, the Aptana IDE changes file-associations in Eclipse. If you have already installed OxygenXML, and prefer to use it as your default XML editor (recommended), navigate to Windows : Preferences and open the preferences tree to General : Editors : File Associations. Make sure that the default editor for *.xml files is still Oxygen (i.e., that Oxygen is at the top of the Associated Editors list for *.xml files); if it is not, select Oxygen and click the Default button in the File Associations dialog.
      • Aptana Start Page: By default, the Aptana Start Page displays each time Eclipse is opened. To change this behavior, navigate to: Aptana : Start Page and select the desired behavior (e.g., Never display after startup).

Some local tips & tricks for RadRails setup were formerly necessary; as of June 2007, these additional steps are performed automatically during Eclipse plugin installation.
Checkstyle Java

A real-time static code analyzer for Java. The analyzer inspects your code, looking for deviations from coding standards and code constructs that are the source of possible bugs or performance and maintenance problems.

Update site: http://eclipse-cs.sourceforge.net/update

Jalopy Java A source code formatter for the Sun Java programming language. It formats any valid Java source code according to configurable rules, to facilitate conformance to coding style guidelines without burdening individual developers.

Download the open-source version from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/jalopy, or, if you "qualify," as a license-holder follow instructions below.

For Berkeley developers who have reserved a license (as of August 2006, IST owns 25 licenses for the Triemax commercial version of this product), the Streek coding style is available when Jalopy is installed from binaries in the CVS repository on canvas: /usr/local/cvsrep/third-party/misc/jalopy-installer. To run the installer after obtaining it (checking it out) from the repository:

  • from a Windows Explorer window, double-click on the JAR file (e.g, jalopy-setup-1.6_152.1.jar)
  • an installer dialog will open
  • accept license terms and (unless you have a reason not to) the default settings to ignore and delete prior settings
  • choose only the Eclipse feature, unchecking the other options (the Eclipse feature is listed as something like Eclipse #-#/WSAD #/RAD #, where # are version numbers)
  • on the same dialog page, choose your Eclipse installation directory for installation of the Jalopy feature (e.g., C:\eclipse)
PMD Java A source code analyzer that applies configurable rules to source (Java) files and reports potential problems. PMD provides excellent feedback to new and veteran Java coders alike. The plugin allows filtering by severity of the identified problems, which renders useful and usable even the unmodified, default set of PMD rules. This plugin is best installed from within Eclipse (Help : Software Updates : Find and Install).

Update site: http://pmd.sf.net/eclipse

EPIC Perl An open source Perl IDE based on the Eclipse platform. Features supported are syntax highlighting, on-the-fly syntax check, content assist, perldoc support, source formatter, templating support and a Perl debugger. A regular expression plugin and support for the eSpell spellchecker are also available.

Update site: http://e-p-i-c.sourceforge.net/updates

In order to have all EPIC features like Syntax Checking, Source Formatting, etc. a perl interpreter is needed. In principle any Perl interpreter can be used. To use debugging within Eclipse, Perl version 5.8.x or 5.6.x is required. Most *nix/Linux installations will provide Perl interpreters out of the box. For many operating systems, including Windows, Perl can be downloaded from www.activestate.com.

Eclipse Plug-ins: Under Consideration

The following plug-ins are currently being evaluated by IST-ASAG:

Plugin Dev Platform Description Download/Update - Dependencies & Notes
SpringIDE Java Spring IDE is a graphical user interface for the configuration files used by the Spring Framework.

Update site: http://springide.org/updatesite

MavenIDE Java Integrates Maven into the Eclipse IDE. Includes facilities for POM editing, IDE and POM synchronization, launching Maven from within the IDE, providing wizards for mavenized projects, managing Maven runtime properties, etc.

Update site: http://mevenide.codehaus.org/release/eclipse/update

Requires both the Maven and Mavenide plugins.
CFEclipse ColdFusion A plugin for the Eclipse platform that provides offers most of the features found in traditional CFML editors and quite a few more.

Update site: http://www.cfeclipse.org/update

Jython DT Python JyDT for Eclipse provides development tools for Jython developers working in the Eclipse IDE.

Update site: http://www.redrobinsoftware.net/jydt/updatesite

Jython is an implementation of Python written in 100% Pure Java, and seamlessly integrated with the Java platform. It thus allows you to run Python on any Java platform. Jython can be installed from downloadeds available at http://www.jython.org/Project/download.html