I’ve ran across several blogs that listed their favorite Eclipse plug-ins. Since I am such a huge Eclipse fan and am always preaching about the power and benefits, it seemed like a good idea for me to document my preferences and experiences. First, you need to start with the Eclipse Java EE version, probably the Ganymede version (3.4), but Galileo (3.5) will be released next week. This Eclipse bundle will give you more than you need, but is the best starting point. Out of the box, Eclipse has many useful features:
- Mylyn – Task focused development support; here is some background information.
- Web Standard Tools – Gives you all of the nice editors for XML, HTML, JSP, etc.
- J2EE Standard Tools – Provides support for J2EE projects, such was the Servlet and EJB.
- Remote System Explorer – Excellent plug-in for accessing remote systems. It enables you to remotely edit files and provides shell access, including SSH.
Here is my personal Top 10+ list of Eclipse Plug-ins:
| Category | Plug-in | Overview |
| Code Quality | Checkstyle | Simple to use. Great for keeping the code consistent and helps enforce many good coding standards. My only dislike of this tool is the suppression implementation. Hopefully they will move to the PMD annotation style. A major new version (5.0) was just released, I have not tested it yet. |
| Code Quality | PMD | Little more complex to setup than Checkstyle, but is probably my favorite plug-in. It looks at the structure of your code, evaluating cyclomatic complexity, jUnit usage, and attribute scoping. It has some overlap with Checkstyle, but both tools together give you a complete solution. |
| Build Support | Ivy | I have blogged about Ivy in the past. Not my favorite plug-in, but required when using Ivy within Eclipse. If you work on multiple projects or do a lot of prototyping, Ivy is an awesome time saver. |
| Construction | Spring IDE | If you develop Spring-based applications, you will want to install this plug-in; it is a must have! The plug-in has numerous helpful views; and makes creating and managing your context files much simpler. |
| Construction | Log4E | Log4E make Java logging significantly easier, no more cutting and pasting from other classes. The free version supports the common logging frameworks, but unfortunately not the current open-source community favorite, SLF4J. |
| Construction | Subversive | This plug-in is used to integrate Subversion into the Team Perspective/View. It also appears to no longer be required with Eclipse 3.5. |
| Construction | Subversive Team Provider | There are two options for integrating Subversion into Eclipse, you can choose either the Tigris or Polarion implementation. The Tigris plug-in seemed easier to get working, but has less features than the Polarion implementation. I started with Tigris, but have settled on the Polarion version about a year ago. |
| Construction | Implementors | This plug-in allows you to navigate from any interface to an implementation of that interface. Especially helpful when you are programming with the Spring Framework. This feature is finally part of Eclipse 3.5, so you might not needs this one any more. |
| Testing | Clover | Clover is my only commercial plug-in; Clover is used to collect code coverage metrics. You have to be a little careful when using this plug-in. Never let Clover instrument the entire project, Eclipse will most likely become completely unresponsive and unusable. If you have a large project, I highly recommend using Eclipse Working Sets to selectively control which files you collect coverage data on. |
| Testing | Findbugs | This is actually on my to do; I have been very happy using Findbugs thru Ant, but have not had a chance to try out the plug-in. |
| Database | SQL Explorer | A database explorer tool is included with the Java EE Eclipse bundle, but it seems to have some usability issues. Most developers seem to be very dissatisfied with the included version and prefer the SQL Explorer plug-in. Probably not perfect, but it works good enough for us Java guys. |
Just a random link of several more plug-ins, http://www.plentyofcode.com/2007/07/most-useful-top-50-eclipse-plug-ins.h6tml There were a few plug-ins on the list that looked interesting, maybe you will think so too. Make sure you read the comments!
