Working with Eclipse under Windows

This is a crash course on using the open-source Eclipse environment under Windows.

Installation

At the very least, the following packages need to be installed to work with C/C++ under Eclipse

• JRE from Sun (I used 1.4.2), as the IDE is mostly Java-based
• Eclipse SDK (I used 3.0.1) . This is a large download  (> 80 MB).  Just unpack it into whatever directory you like (it is not afraid of spaces in filenames, so Program Files\Ecl worked in my case) . Note that since no actual installation is involved, no icons are created automagically.
• C/C++ Add-on (I used 2.0.2). Use Update feature in Help menu  of Eclipse, explicitly specify http://update.eclipse.org/tools/cdt/releases/new as a new URL.
• Cygwin gcc/gdb from http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe . Select fast hosts for installation (.gov work well for me in the US), install stuff from Base and Devel sections. Install Cygwin into a directory that does not  contain spaces in the name (\cygw works for me). Add this directory to PATH environment variable - otherwise Eclipse will not find the tools.

Perspectives

All IDEs use multiple window configurations for different tasks, like editing and debugging. In Eclipse, this process is made explicit via "perspectives" - stored window configuration layouts. Eclipse likes to ask questions if it is OK to change to a new perspective - in my experience, answer shall always be "yes". The perspectives can be switched via a selector in the top right corner of the IDE. So, if you are wondering where all your editing screens have gone after a debugging session, don't worry - they are only a click away ☺.

Active Project

Unfortunately, Eclipse does not have a notion of "active project" similar to other IDEs. If one is not careful, it is very easy to build or execute a wrong project in a multi-project environment. Some hints:

• Run As / Debug As selection work with the project currently selected in the project pane
• After the first debug / run, additional options in the corresponding menus will point to projects to debug or build
• I gave up trying to figure how to build projects without running them ☺

Eclipse community is discussing introduction of an active project notion. Unfortunately, the C/C++ projects apparently go somewhat against the grain of "sea of classes" in Java, and therefore are hard to graft onto primarily Java-oriented culture of core Eclipse developers.