RC0601 - Eclipse as a Java Development Platform (IDE)

Goal

Mastering the Eclipse platform as a Java development platform

Duration

3 days

Prerequisites

• Mastering Java at a professional level

Content

• The Architecture of the Eclipse platform.This is a basic walk-through of all the basic components of the Eclipse workspace. This includes the following concepts: tool bars, menus, status bar; perspectives, editors and views.
• The Eclipse Navigator. Within the Eclipse platform you can navigate between the individual resources in many different ways. One of the primary means of navigation is the Eclipse resource navigator. Here the resources are organized as projects, folders and files.
• Basic Editing of Text. This lesson focuses on the basic means for editing text in the text editors of Eclipse. This includes how you manoeuvre in editors as well as the means for find and replace.
• Searching and Browsing. There are many different ways to search in text files. E.g. for Java files it is possible to search for specific types of tokens such as class names. This lesson describes the different ways you can search for text as well as other ways for browsing files such as class and call hierarchy views and different quick views.
• Launching and Debugging applications. This is a description of how an application is launched in Eclipse and the different ways an application can be debugged in Eclipse.
• Formatting Java.  Almost every organization has specific rules for how Java source code must be formatted and indented. This lesson describes how Eclipse can (nearly) automatically format Java source in almost all possible combinations.
• Templates. One of the very simple productivity enhancements in the Eclipse platform is templates. Templates can among other things be used to conform to organization specific comment rules. This lesson goes through how templates can be used and how new templates can be defined.
• Interfacing to Source Management Systems. The Eclipse platform is born with a complete interface to CVS. This lesson describes how to use this interface with the focus on the daily management of a project.
• Customizing the Eclipse platform. The Eclipse platform, as any other similar platform, can be customized endlessly. This lesson goes though the more important customizations and gives an overview of the rest. The lesson also lists some of the ways the platform can be optimized when running on slower hardware.
• Testing using JUnit. The Eclipse platform has built-in support for testing using JUnit (both version 3 and 4). This lesson describes how this support can be used to do a complete test of almost all projects.
• Updating Eclipse. One of the characteristics of the Eclipse platform is the plug-in nature of all functionality. This makes it possible to incrementally update the platform. This lesson describes how and where to find high-quality plug-ins for Eclipse and how to keep these up-to-date.
• Interesting Plug-ins. The Eclipse project is more than just the basic platform and an exceptional Java editor. The lesson describes some of the more interesting Eclipse projects for end-users such as the projects in Callisto.

Style

The course is a mixture of theory and practice and is divided into a number of lessons. Each lesson contains

• A detailed theoretical walk-though of all the concepts and terms of the lesson.
• A practical case where the gained knowledge from the subject is used.
• A list of sources for additional information on the subject of the lesson.