Project Development in Eclipse

An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) should be used to develop source code.  Eclipse is a good choice, as it is free, widely used, and well supported.

You will also want to install the m2eclipse plugin for Maven support and Subversive which provides a Subversion client interface.

Before You Start

Before you start to setup Eclipse, you should follow the instructions at Installing HPS Java to install locally the HPS Java trunk, which contains the various modules that will be loaded as projects.

Installing Eclipse

You can download an installation bundle from the Eclipse downloads site.

There are many different Eclipse configurations provided here, and you will most likely want the Eclipse IDE for Java Developers, which provides a Java IDE and built-in support for Maven.

To install it, simply download the correct file for your operating system by following the links, and then use unzip or tar to unpack it.

This will create a directory called eclipse, and you should run eclipse/eclipse to start the application.

This program can also be setup as an application shortcut in your window manager, which on my Linux system looks something like this.

The actual paths will, of course, depend on where you have installed Eclipse on your system.

Configuring Plugins

Subversive

The Subversive Plugin provides a graphical Subversion client within Eclipse, implementing commands like commit, update, etc.

1. In Eclipse, open Help > Install New Software.

2. Under work with put the appropriate URL for your release, e.g. for Luna this would be the following.

   http://download.eclipse.org/releases/luna

3. Find the Collaboration item under the Name column, expand it, and select the checkbox for Subversive Team Provider.
4. Click Next two times.
5. Accept the license terms, and finally click on Finish.
6. Restart Eclipse.

When you go to use this plugin, a window will appear with the title Install Connectors.

In order to pick the right connector which provides the Subversion client, you will need to find out what version you already have installed on the command line.

For instance, this is the Subversion information on my Linux system.

[$] svn --version
svn, version 1.8.10 (r1615264)

So I checked SVN Kit 1.8.6 for my connector and then Finish.

Eclipse Projects

Creating a New Java Project

To create a new project in Eclipse, you can select File > New > Java Project from the menu.  This will start a wizard for creating the new project.

We will create a project for the users module where miscellaneous user analysis code is located.

In the New Java Project window, you need to do the following.

1. Type the name of the project in the Project name text box, e.g. "hps-users".
2. Uncheck Use default location and navigate to the root directory of the module for the project using Browse.
3. Add the project to a working set (optional).

Then click on the Finish button and the project should now show up in the Package Explorer within the Java View.

Project Source Code Formatting

The HPS collaboration uses a standard code formatting convention for Java based on the Java Code Conventions.

To set this up for your projects, right click on a project in Eclipse, then select Properties.

Navigate to Java Code Style > Formatter to edit the settings for this project.

Check the box marked Enable project specific settings and then click the New button.

Name the profile e.g. "My Java Settings" and select "Java Conventions" from the drop-down menu. 

This configuration will appear something like the following now.

Then click OK to edit the settings.

You will now edit the specific formatting settings which will be used for Java projects.

There are only a few changes which will be made to the defaults.

Under Tab policy, select "Spaces only".

For Tab size, put 4 instead of 8.

Now your window should look something like this.

Next click Apply and then OK.

Building a Maven Project

It is useful to create a custom build configuration for executing Maven on the project.

Open the window Run > Run Configurations.

Right click on Maven Build and select New.

Setup the new configuration to look like this.

In order to use this, automatic builds must be turned off, which can be done from the menus by deselecting Project > Build Automatically.

To execute this, select the project by left clicking on it, and then go to Run > Run Configurations, click on your configuration, and then click the Run button.

The build log should show up in the console window.

Building HPS Java

It will also be useful to setup a Run Configuration for building the entire trunk of HPS Java and not just a single module at a time.

This can be accomplished by creating a new Run Configuration which looks similar to this.

Notice that instead of an Eclipse variable pointing at the current project directory, the actual path to your HPS Java trunk is put under Base directory instead. 

The above is just an example from my machine.  The actual location will depend on wherever you checked it out in the first place.

When you click Run on this configuration, all of the modules will be installed and not just a single one.  This is useful for creating a new distribution jar with all your local changes included in it.