Using Eclipse

Introduction:

Eclipse is IBM's popular, open-source, multi-platform IDE written in Java.
Its architecture supports powerful plugins to extend functionality as
desired. Eclipse natively supports multiple projects, alternate resource
views, varying perspectives for tools, and built in viewers for image
files. Ant support is integrated into Eclipse, and projects are
automatically monitored and compiled according to their application
structure. Available plugins allow for UML modelling of the project
source, Tomcat project integration, and XML formatters and validators.

Motivation:

Multiple free IDEs are available with excellent Java support, but none has
the speed, finish, nor features found in Eclipse. The development
environment should cater to the developer, and Eclipse's customization
features ensure that important tools are always easily accessed. Since CVS
houses the project repository, Eclipse's built-in support is atractive and
convenient. Integrated Ant also provides powerful build and database
automation, which simplifies developer tasks.

Usage:

Without Eclipse's support environment, productivity would've suffered. The
following features contributed to the Referee Scheduler's success:

	1.) CVS - Eclipse's integrated CVS support made project access,
synchronization, and modification simple. The CVS perspective provides
file system navigation of a CVS repository for easy project checkout.
Within the Java and resource perspectives, both files and directories can
be synchronized, updated, or committed using the mouse driven team menu. A
project update only takes two clicks of the mouse. Additionally, a
synchronization perspective can compare local files to the repository and
display the differences. With this visual diff you can modify the files
and choose which should change or merge them.

	2.) Tomcat - The Sysdeo Tomcat plugin automates many of the tasks
needed to manage a Tomcat project, and it functions entirely within
Eclipse. The plugin handles creating the Tomcat work directory, modifying
the Tomcat server's applications, and controlling the Tomcat server within
Eclipse.