Chapter 10. JamaicaVM Plug-in for Eclipse

Table of Contents
Getting Eclipse and the JamaicaVM Plug-in
Working with the Plug-in

For the Open-Source development environment Eclipse is a plug-in available that integrates the JamaicaVM and JamaicaVM Builder into a powerful IDE. So far, working with JamaicaVM and the JamaicaVM Builder meant to work on the command line. Especially configuring the Builder with its great number of different options requires a very good understanding of the tool. Integrating the Builder into an IDE will help to more easily create such configurations.

Getting Eclipse and the JamaicaVM Plug-in

Installing Eclipse

Downloads are available from the main Eclipse site http://www.eclipse.org. Get the Eclipse SDK archive that matches your host plattform and unpack it. For Eclipse 3.0 and higher, a JDK 1.4.2 is required.

Installing the JamaicaVM Plug-in

There are two ways to install the plug-in:

Using the Eclipse Update Manager

The following instructions reference Eclipse 3.0:

  1. Choose Help->Software Updates->Find and Install... to open a wizard that will guide you through the installation process.

  2. Select Search for new features to install and press Next >.

  3. Click on Add Update Site... to add the aicas update site to the list.

  4. Fill in the text fields depending on your Eclipse version:

    Field Name :aicas
    Field URL (Eclipse 2.1) :http://www.aicas.com/download/eclipse/2.1
    Field URL (Eclipse 3.0) :http://www.aicas.com/download/eclipse/3.0

  5. Browse the newly created site and select the category matching your JamaicaVM version. Press Next >.

  6. This page shows the available plug-in. Select it and press Next >.

  7. The wizard will guide you through the rest of the installtion process.

Manual installation

  1. Download a plug-in matching your JamaicaVM version form the JamaicaVM Plug-in website http://www.aicas.com/eclipse.html.

  2. Copy the dowloaded zip file into the Eclipse installation directory.

  3. Unpack the archive using unzip com.aicas.jamaica.eclipse_x.y.z. This creates sub-directories in the plugins and features directory.

  4. Restart Eclipse.

Plug-in set up

If everything worked properly and Eclipse has restarted, the plug-ins welcome page is automatically opend. It is best to follow those instructions to quickly set up required plug-in settings. The first thing to do is setting the correct path of your Jamaica installation in the plug-ins Preferences Page. Open this dialog choosing Window->Preferences and select JamaicaVM Builder.