The first time you run Eclipse, you’re presented with a dialog that allows you to select a Workspace.
Workspace
Accept the default location for your Workspace.
%USERPROFILE%\workspace
Check “Use this as the default and don not ask again”.
Note: If you’re reinstalling Eclipse, you mustn’t reuse the same default location for your workspace – this will corrupt your Eclipse installation. I learned this the hard way because I’d been using C:\Users\Chris\workspace, and I wanted to use that directory again; so I made a copy of it and saved it (into E:\Safe\workspace), and then cleaned C:\Users\Chris\workspace.
Check for updates
Before you start installing addins to Eclipse, make sure you’re working with the latest version (build) of Eclipse.
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To update Eclipse, click Help > Check for Updates
Check the Status Bar for the update task’s progress.
Set preferences
In Eclipse, click Window > Preferences, and then systematically go through the items in the hierarchical menu in the left pane – and check each item’s configuration.
General
Appearance
Enable: Enable Animations
Compare/Patch/ > Text Compare
Enable: Initially show ancestry pane
Error Reporting
Enter your name and e-mail address
Workspace
Enable: Save automatically before build
Enable: Show workspace path in window title
Text file encoding: Other > UTF-8
Ant
Editor
Enable: Mark occurrences of the selected element in the current buildfile
Install/Update
Automatic Updates
Enable: Configure Eclipse so it automatically updates each time you start it.
Java
Editor
Folding
Enable: Comments, Inner types, and Members
Hovers
Enable: Combined Hover
Typing
Enable: Automatically insert at correct position > Semicolons > Braces
Team
Enable: Show the file author in compare editors
Git
History
Enable: E-mail addresses in Author/Committer columns
Update errors
If the update process fails, throwing errors like this:
No repository found containing: osgi.bundle,org.eclipse.aether.api,1.0.1.v20141111
No repository found containing: osgi.bundle,org.eclipse.aether.connector.basic,1.0.1.v20141111
No repository found containing: osgi.bundle,org.eclipse.aether.impl,1.0.1.v20141111
Then you need to refresh the list of “Available Software Sites.”
To do so, select them all in Preferences > Install/Update > Available Software Sites, and then click Remove.
Any easy way to add them back is to Import the file named bookmarks.xml with the following content:
bookmarks.xml
<?xml version=”1.0” encoding=”UTF-8”?> <bookmarks> <site url=”https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/” selected=”true” name=”Android Developer Tools (ADT)”/> <site url=”http://download.eclipse.org/recommenders/updates/stable/” selected=”true” name=”Code Recommenders Stable Update Site”/> <site url=”http://download.eclipse.org/releases/luna/” selected=”true” name=”Eclipse Luna”/> <site url=”http://www.oxygenxml.com/InstData/Editor/Eclipse/site.xml” selected=”true” name=”oXygen”/> <site url=”http://pydev.sf.net/updates/” selected=”true” name=”PyDev Update Site”/> <site url=”http://resteditor.sourceforge.net/eclipse/” selected=”true” name=”ReST Editor Update Site”/> <site url=”http://jautodoc.sourceforge.net/update/” selected=”true” name=”update site: http://jautodoc.sourceforge.net/update/”/> </bookmarks>
Add common libraries
When I was experimenting with Java projects, I continually ran into instances where projects depended on external libraries (JSON, IO, etc.). After downloading a few of them, I simply downloaded several of them – so I’d always have then on hand.
To add the common libraries, visit: