Getting started with Eclipse

Eclipse is more than an IDE; it's an entire development ecosystem. This section is a brief hands-on introduction to using Eclipse for Java development.

The Eclipse development environment

The Eclipse development environment has four main components:

• Workspace
• Projects
• Perspectives
• Views

The primary unit of organization in Eclipse is the workspace. A workspace contains all of your projects. A perspective is a way of looking at each project (hence the name), and within a perspective are one or more views.

The Java perspective

Figure 2 shows the Java perspective, which is the default perspective for Eclipse. You should see this perspective when you start Eclipse.

Figure 2. Eclipse Java perspective

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The Java perspective contains the tools that you need to begin writing Java applications. Each tabbed window shown in Figure 2 is a view for the Java perspective. Package Explorer and Outline are two particularly useful views.
The Eclipse environment is highly configurable. Each view is dockable, so you can move it around in the Java perspective and place it where you want it. For now, though, stick with the default perspective and view setup.

Create a project

Follow these steps to create a new Java project:

1. Click File > New > Java Project... to start the New Java Project wizard, shown in Figure 3.

   Figure 3. New Java Project wizard

   
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2. Enter Tutorial as the project name and click Finish.
3. If you want to modify the default project settings, click Next (recommended only if you have experience with the Eclipse IDE).
4. Click Finish to accept the project setup and create the project.

You have now created a new Eclipse Java project and source folder. Your development environment is ready for action. However, an understanding of the OOP paradigm — covered in this tutorial's next two sections — is essential. If you are familiar with OOP concepts and principles, you might want to skip to the "Getting started with the Java language" section.

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