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As I have mentioned elsehwere in this notebook, I prefer Metrowerks Codewarrior 9 for Windows to any other C/C++ IDE. I have tried KDevelop, but have not really been that happy with it. I am currently trying out Eclipse, because a friend of mine uses it, and because I have read good things about it.

Unfortunately, the install process is not really straight-forward, and I had a great deal of trouble locating a decent page describing how to install it. The biggest difficulty was getting the Java Runtime Environment installed properly. I owe the successful installation to the following:

• Java JRE/JDK Installation on Debian with java-package (which, actually, is a much better writeup than the one on this page),
  
  
• Eclipse on Linux, and
  
  
• Chad, for showing it to me for the first time, and for pointing me in the right direction when I neared exasperation during the install process.

Here is the install process that was successful for me. Keep in mind that I am using Debian 3.1 (Sarge).

1. Make sure that contrib is included in your APT sources. For instance, my /etc/apt/sources.list contains the following line:
   
   deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian sarge main contrib non-free
   
   
2. Then, as root, update your package list
   
   
   su
   apt-get update
   
   
3. Install the java-package package
   
   
   apt-get install java-package
   
   
4. Download Java. I only have experience installing the Sun Java 1.5.0 for 32-bit x86, so that is the one I will describe installing here. Obviously, choose the one appropriate for your installation. I downloaded the one from the link that says "Download JDK 5.0 Update 5".
   
   You want the one that ends in just .bin, NOT the one that ends in .rpm.bin, and not the one with the NetBeans Bundle. I saved the binary to a temp directory in my home directory. It doesn't matter where you save it to.
   
   
5. Next, you need to Debian-ize the archive, and convert it into a Debian package. Do not do this as root. Exit first. Assuming you do this from the directory that the .bin is located in, it will create the .deb in that same directory.
   
   
   exit
   fakeroot make-jpkg jre-1_5_0_05-linux-i586.bin
   
   
6. Install the Debian package that was created in the previous step
   
   
   su
   dpkg -i sun-j2re1.5_1.5.0+update05_i386.deb
   
   
7. Check to see that it was installed correctly
   
   
   java -version
   
   Actually, when I did this, I received a "java: command not found" error. For some reason, the path wasn't updated.
   
   

Here's how I fixed my path:

1. First check to see what the path currently is. As a normal user, type
   
   
   echo $PATH
   
   I saw the following:
   /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/games:
   
   
2. Determine where java was actually installed to
   
   
   su
   updatedb
   locate j2sdk1.5-sun | grep javah
   
   If you installed the JRE instead of the SDK, then you'll probably want to locate j2jre instead. Mine returned
   
   
   usr/lib/j2sdk1.5-sun/bin/javah
   
   along with a bunch of other stuff. So I knew I had to add
   
   
   /usr/lib/j2sdk1.5-sun/bin/
   
   to my path.
   
   
3. Update the path by copying the results from Step 1, and adding the path to java
   
   
   exit
   export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/games:/usr/lib/j2sdk1.5-sun/bin
   
   
4. Now when you type
   
   
   java -version
   
   you should see something that looks like
   
   
   java version "1.5.0_05"
   Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_05-b05)
   Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_05-b05, mixed mode, sharing)
   
   Unfortunately, this only adds java to the path for this session.

The hard part is over now.

1. Go to the Eclipse Downloads page, and download the appropriate tarball. At the time of this writing, the newest version available was 3.1.1. So, I downloaded
   
   
   eclipse-SDK-3.1.1-linux-gtk.tar.gz
   
   
2. Copy the file to an appropriate location for unpacking. I chose /usr/bin
   
   
   su
   cp eclipse-SDK-3.1.1-linux-gtk.tar.gz /usr/bin/
   
   
3. Unpack the tarball
   
   
   cd /usr/bin/
   tar -xzvf eclipse-SDK-3.1.1-linux-gtk.tar.gz
   
   It should create the /usr/bin/eclipse directory and unpack the contents there.
   
   
4. Run eclipse
   
   
   exit
   /usr/bin/eclipse &

It fired right up for me.




Of course, if you want to do C/C++ programming, you will also need CDT. The steps are exactly the same as for installing Eclipse.

1. Go to the Eclipse Downloads page, and download the appropriate tarball. At the time of this writing, the newest version available was CDT 3.0.1. So, I downloaded
   
   
   org.eclipse.cdt-3.0.1-linux.x86.tar.gz
   
   
2. Copy the file to wherever you unpacked eclipse (I unpacked it in /usr/bin)
   
   
   su
   cp org.eclipse.cdt-3.0.1-linux.x86.tar.gz /usr/bin/
   
   
3. Unpack the tarball
   
   
   cd /usr/bin/
   tar -xzvf org.eclipse.cdt-3.0.1-linux.x86.tar.gz
   
   It should create the /usr/bin/eclipse/plugins directory and unpack the contents there.
   
   
4. Run eclipse again
   
   
   exit
   /usr/bin/eclipse &

Now when you look under File -> New -> Project, there should be C and C++ project types available.




Ok, this next part is a pretty bad hack. The path has to be updated to include java before Eclipse can be launched. So, what I did was create a script to do this in one shot.

1. As root, create a script called eclipse.sh in /usr/bin
   
   
   su
   cd /usr/bin
   nano -w eclipse.sh
   
   
2. The script should include the following lines:
   
   
   PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib/j2sdk1.5-sun/bin
   /usr/bin/eclipse/eclipse
   
   The first line adds java to the path, and the second launches Eclipse.
   
   
3. Make the script executable
   
   
   chmod 777 eclipse.sh

Now, I can add that to my KDE menu, and launch the application easily.