Some time ago I wrote about installing Eclipse (under Windows), bemoaning the fact that the Eclipse.org site strangely seems to not have any articles for Eclipse novices, at least none that I could find at the time:
Perhaps the Eclipse site is a little too too elitest, or too taken up with new releases and advanced topics? Or maybe the
really basic material is there, somewhere in a dark corner of the site, or maybe it has been added recently and I haven't noticed it? What I have been trying to locate is a starter page that's absolutely
easy to find, and that starts something like: "Never used Eclipse before? Then just follow these simple steps to install and start using Eclipse." (If I'm wrong about this, please let me know and I'll gladly post the relevant URLs here.)
In the meantime, I've just come across a good tutorial at the Novell-hosted
Linux University for Developers, a nice introduction to installing and starting to use Eclipse, called
Getting Started with the Eclipse IDEAnd there's another tutorial called
Eclipse Key Features which should be also be good for Eclipse novices.
I agree that eclipse.org is too elitest. Maybe what they need is something like www.getfirefox.com - a simple page with a download link that matches the current operating system.
ReplyDeleteHave a look at EasyEclipse, I think this is exactly what you want :-)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.easyeclipse.org/site/home/
Yes, EasyEclipse does indeed have the potential for being easier to install. Starngely, I came across this site already about a week ago, so it would seem that they're not all that well known. They should try to get more publicity for themselves (for example, by submitting news and articles to the Java medie such as JavaLobby, JDJ, etc. I see that they have packaged installers for other languages of choice (LAMP, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python) which looks pretty interesting.
ReplyDeleteI have a subscription to Genuitec's MyEclipse, and without this wouldn't be able to cope with all the Eclipse plug-ins.
I would also have to comment that NetBeans offers a much simpler and less painful installation experience than does Eclipse. It uses the traditional installer executable approcah, whereas Eclipse uses the approach of "unzip into a folder then run eclipse.exe" approach -- which these days although quite simple to do (once you realize this is what is expected to be done) is non-standard, somewhat unexpected, and is not even mentioned on the Eclipse.org site. It would only take up a few sentences on their download page, and IMHO they should do it. And at least until fairly recently you used to be faced with a long list of possible packages to download with only the filename to give you an indication of the contents (so once I inadvertently downloaded and installed the "Eclipse platform" rather than the "Eclipse SDK" and spent hours trying to work out why there was no Java compiler in it). That's why I referred to the Eclipse site as somewhat "elitist", perhaps not the correct choice of word but I'll stick with it for the moment until they make their site easier for the novice.