IDE Recommendations

General

Regardless of the IDE, a sufficiently recent JDK is required as specified in the installation instructions. No system-wide installation required, but it needs to be usable from within the IDE.

Eclipse

The author recommends using the most recent version of Eclipse (at least 2023-06). The following documentation assumes you are starting with the pre-packaged Eclipse IDE for Java Developers. When using a different installation, additional steps may be necessary.

It is recommended to set the JDK as workspace default to avoid having to change project configuration.

Plug-ins

The following documentation only lists additional plug-ins that are NOT contained in the package mentioned above.

Required plug-ins

None so far.

Recommended Eclipse plug-ins

These are available via Help > Install New Software.

Eclipse Web Developer Tools
Eclipse Web JavaScript Developer Tools
Eclipse XML Editors and Tools

Recommended 3rd party plug-ins

These are all available via Help > Eclipse Marketplace.

Suggested general tools

These are all available via Help > Eclipse Marketplace as well