Set up Eclipse from Scratch

Introduction

Eclipse IDE provides is an Integrated development environment for programming. It is most widely used for Java application development but not limited to Java only. Also, developers use it for other programming languages like C, C++, Python, R, Ruby, Javascript, etc as well. It provides with all the tools and functions required to work on computer programming. In addition to this, it also extensible in multiple ways by adding plug-ins. Hence it is customizable based on requirements.

Eclipse software development kit (SDK) is an open source software and is free to download and use.

Importance of Eclipse in Automation

Eclipse is the most popular well versed IDE editor to develop Java applications. It is the preference of developers for various development purposes. So, if you are using java language for writing your selenium scripts then most of the projects recommend using Eclipse IDE. Eclipse is freeware and easy to understand. It has wide community support as well. Although it is not hard and fast to use Eclipse IDE only for Selenium Automation. Even IntelliJ and Netbeans can be used depending on what IDE project recommends.

Eclipse Setup steps

Pre-requisites

The prerequisite to starting the Eclipse IDE is that Java should be properly installed and available for use in your machine. To sum up

• Java should be downloaded and installed in the machine.
• Java environment variables JAVA_HOME and Path should be set.

You can check if these steps have been completed by you by going to command prompt and firing the commands

javac -version

If the steps mentioned above are not yet completed, please refer to the https://Java Set Up tutorial.

Download

1. Goto official website of Eclipse https://www.Eclipse.org/. Click on the download button

2. It will navigate to download page. At the bottom, click on the link given to download packages. It is highlighted by a blue border in below screenshot.

Note: Please do not click on download 64-bit button here as there are many flavors of Eclipse available. We need to select the right Eclipse package to download depending on our requirement.

3. You will be navigated to a web page with multiple Eclipse packages available for download. We need Eclipse IDE for Java Developers.  This is the most suitable flavor of Eclipse for Selenium automation which provides all the setup and tools required to accomplish the automation work. Click on 64-bit download in case you have windows 64-bit machine.  If you have Mac or Linux, select the appropriate package and configuration for download.

4. Click on the Download button.  It will start the download of a zip file in the download folder selected by you in your local machine. It will take a while to complete the download.

Installation

There is no typical installation process of Eclipse. You just need to unzip the downloaded folder and double click on the Eclipse icon to start the installation process. Below steps elaborate the process in detail.

1. Goto the folder where the zip file is saved. Unzip it to a preferred location where you want to save Eclipse. I have unzipped it in C:\softwares. Once unzip is complete, It will create a folder with name Eclipse at the selected location.

2. Open the Eclipse folder created after unzip. You will notice an Eclipse icon. Double click on this icon. You can also create a shortcut for this icon on the desktop or pin it to your taskbar. You will be using this icon to launch your Eclipse IDE.

3. Once you double click on the Eclipse icon, it will start launching the Eclipse on your machine. To start with, it will ask for the workspace location. Workspace is the folder in your system where Eclipse will save all your projects by default. I have selected the default location prompted by Eclipse. After deciding the workspace, click on the launch button at the bottom.

4. It will navigate you to the first ever screen of Eclipse which has various links to introduce you to the IDE. We will click on the workbench icon on the top right.

5. After you click on the workbench icon, it will navigate you to the Eclipse work area where you can create your projects.

Eclipse at first sight

At first, when you click on the workbench icon, below screen will load.

This screen consists of 5 sections.

• Package Explorer: The leftmost portion is Package Explorer which shows all your projects in the Eclipse. You can perform multiple operations like create, delete, refresh, refactor and soon on your projects.
• Editor area: It is the center portion of the screen. It is the work area where you will write your code. Here you can open the programs and edit them.
• Eclipse Console: When you execute the code, this area will show the execution results.
• Outline view: It displays the file details open in the editor section.
• Task view: It shows the task repository depending on the requirement of the project.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have learned the steps to download Eclipse IDE, start it in the local machine. This tutorial also introduces about Eclipse IDE and its importance in automation projects.