In this article by Alex Bretet, author of the book Spring MVC Cookbook, you will learn to install Eclipse for Java EE developers and Java SE 8.

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Introduction

The choice of the Eclipse IDE needs to be discussed as there is some competition in this domain. Eclipse is popular in the Java community for being an active open source product; it is consequently accessible online to anyone with no restrictions. It also provides, among other usages, a very good support to web implementations, particularly to MVC approaches.

Why use the Spring Framework?

The Spring Framework and its community have also contributed to pull forward the Java platform for more than a decade. Presenting the whole framework in detail would require us to write more than a article. However, the core functionality based on the principles of Inversion of Control and Dependency Injection through a performant access to the bean repository allows massive reusability. Staying lightweight, the Spring Framework secures great scaling capabilities and could probably suit all modern architectures.

The following recipe is about downloading and installing the Eclipse IDE for JEE developers and downloading and installing JDK 8 Oracle Hotspot.

Getting ready

This first sequence could appear as redundant or unnecessary with regard to your education or experience.

For instance, you will, for sure, stay away from unidentified bugs (integration or development). You will also be assured of experiencing the same interfaces as the presented screenshots and figures. Also, because third-party products are living, you will not have to face the surprise of encountering unexpected screens or windows.

How to do it...

You need to perform the following steps to install the Eclipse IDE:

Download a distribution of the Eclipse IDE for Java EE developers. We will be using in this article an Eclipse Luna distribution. We recommend you to install this version, which can be found at https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/eclipse-ide-java-ee-developers/lunasr1, so that you can follow along with our guidelines and screenshots completely. Download a Luna distribution for the OS and environment of your choice:
The product to be downloaded is not a binary installer but a ZIP archive. If you feel confident enough to use another version (more actual) of the Eclipse IDE for Java EE developers, all of them can be found at https://www.eclipse.org/downloads.

For the upcoming installations, on Windows, a few target locations are suggested to be at the root directory C:. To avoid permission-related issues, it would be better if your Windows user is configured to be a local administrator. If you can't be part of this group, feel free to target installation directories you have write access to.
Extract the downloaded archive into an eclipse directory:
- If you are on Windows, archive into the C:Users{system.username}eclipse directory
- If you are using Linux, archive into the /home/usr/{system.username}/eclipse directory
- If you are using Mac OS X, archive into the /Users/{system.username}/eclipse directory
Select and download a JDK 8. We suggest you to download the Oracle Hotspot JDK. Hotspot is a performant JVM implementation that has originally been built by Sun Microsystems. Now owned by Oracle, the Hotspot JRE and JDK are downloadable for free.
Choose the product corresponding to your machine through Oracle website's link, http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk8-downloads-2133151.html.

To avoid a compatibility issue later on, do stay consistent with the architecture choice (32 or 64 bits) that you have made earlier for the Eclipse archive.

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Install the JDK 8.
On Windows, perform the following steps:
- Execute the downloaded file and wait until you reach the next installation step.
- On the installation-step window, pay attention to the destination directory and change it to C:javajdk1.8.X_XX (X_XX as the latest current version. We will be using jdk1.8.0_25 in this article.)
- Also, it won't be necessary to install an external JRE, so uncheck the Public JRE feature.
On a Linux/Mac OS, perform the following steps:
- Download the tar.gz archive corresponding to your environment.
- Change the current directory to where you want to install Java. For easier instructions, let's agree on the /usr/java directory.
- Move the downloaded tar.gz archive to this current directory.
- Unpack the archive with the following command line, targeting the name of your archive:
tar zxvf jdk-8u25-linux-i586.tar.gz (This example is for a binary archive corresponding to a Linux x86 machine).
You must end up with the /usr/java/jdk1.8.0_25 directory structure that contains the subdirectories /bin, /db, /jre, /include, and so on.

How it works…

Eclipse for Java EE developers

We have installed the Eclipse IDE for Java EE developers. Comparatively to Eclipse IDE for Java developers, there are some additional packages coming along, such as Java EE Developer Tools, Data Tools Platform, and JavaScript Development Tools. This version is appreciated for its capability to manage development servers as part of the IDE itself and its capability to customize the Project Facets and to support JPA.

The Luna version is officially Java SE 8 compatible; it has been a decisive factor here.

Choosing a JVM

The choice of JVM implementation could be discussed over performance, memory management, garbage collection, and optimization capabilities.

There are lots of different JVM implementations, and among them, a couple of open source solutions, such as OpenJDK and IcedTea (RedHat). It really depends on the application requirements. We have chosen Oracle Hotspot from experience, and from reference implementations, deployed it in production; it can be trusted for a wide range of generic purposes. Hotspot also behaves very well to run Java UI applications. Eclipse is one of them.

Java SE 8

If you haven't already played with Scala or Clojure, it is time to take the functional programming train! With Java SE 8, Lambda expressions reduce the amount of code dramatically with an improved readability and maintainability. We won't implement only this Java 8 feature, but it being probably the most popular, it must be highlighted as it has given a massive credit to the paradigm change. It is important nowadays to feel familiar with these patterns.