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.

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 probably want the Eclipse IDE for Java Developers, which provides a Java IDE and built-in support for Maven.  (The link is specifically for the Luna release.)

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

You should see a directory called eclipse and the script at eclipse/eclipse will 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.

To install Subversive, follow these steps.

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

2. Under the Work with field, paste in the appropriate URL for your release, e.g. for Luna this is the following.

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

3. Once Eclipse is done loading the available plugin list, find the Collaboration item under the Name column, expand it, and check the box for Subversive Team Provider.
4. Click Next twice.
5. Accept the license terms, and finally click on Finish to install the plugin.
6. Restart Eclipse.

When you go to use this plugin, a window will appear with the title Install Connectors.  The easiest way to trigger this wizard is by going to Window > Open Perspective > Other and selecting SVN Repository Exploring, then clicking the OK button.

In order to pick the right connector, you will need to figure 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)

You need to match up the first two numbers in the command line client with this connector version.  Since I have a "1.8" client, I checked SVN Kit 1.8.6 for my connector and then Finish.  (The JavaHL connectors should be ignored.)

Eclipse Projects

Creating a New Java Project

To create a new project in Eclipse, you can select File > New > Java Project from the main 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 HPS Java.

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.

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 configuration, automatic builds should be turned off, which can be done by deselecting Project > Build Automatically from the application menu.

To execute this build configuration, select the project in the Package Explorer or Project Explorer by left clicking on it, and then go to Run > Run Configurations, click on your Maven configuration, and finally click the Run button there.

The build log should show up in the console window as the project compiles.

Project Source Code Formatting

The HPS collaboration uses a standard Java code formatting convention 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.

Subversion

An extensive set of Subversion commands are available under the Team and Compare with sub-menus when you right click on a Java file or package in the project.

To update a file to its current version in the trunk, you can select Team > Update.

You may compare a file against its current remote copy by going to Compare With > Latest from repository.

You can add a file to SVN by selecting Team > Add to version control.

To commit a file or select of files, you can use Team > Commit.

When you remove a file using Delete from the right-click menu, Eclipse will remove the file and automatically mark it for deletion in the next SVN commit.

Editor Configuration

You should also setup some of the other editors in Eclipse to use spaces instead of tabs.

This is done through the menu under Window > Preferences.

For text editors, go to General > Editors > Text Editors > Insert spaces for tabs and check it.

For XML files, go to XML > XML Files > Editor and select Indent using spaces and set Indentation size to 4.

There are other places where this can be configured as well, for various types of editors.  This link provides useful answers on where all these settings are located and how they can be configured to use spaces only.