Install Eclipse Indigo 64bit on Windows 7 64bit

I recently installed the latest version of Eclipse on Windows 7 64bit and noticed some changes which I wanted to document below. I will copy some tips from my previous posts concerning Eclipse (on Mac OS X and Windows) here for your convenience.

Note: These instructions also work for the latest Eclipse Juno version. Just replace references to Indigo, like in the Eclipse plugin URLs, with Juno.

Install Eclipse

1. Download the latest Eclipse. I chose the “Windows 64 Bit” download link for the “Eclipse IDE for Java Developers” package. (I downloaded a zip archive named “eclipse-jee-indigo-SR2-win32-x86_64.zip”.)
2. Unzip the Eclipse zip archive using WinZip or 7-Zip (7-Zip is free). Do not use Windows’ built-in zip support as it will create a corrupt Eclipse installation. (Update: With the latest Eclipse Juno release, Winzip will return an error. 7-Zip will still work fine.)
   • When I attempted to run Eclipse after unzipping with the Windows’ built-in zip support, I got an error. In the error log file was this exception: “java.lang.IllegalStateException: Unable to acquire application service. Ensure that the org.eclipse.core.runtime bundle is resolved and started (see config.ini).” I was not able to find the “config.ini” file.
3. Start Eclipse and select your workspace location. (If you select an old location which was used by an older version of Eclipse, make sure to delete the “.metadata” sub-directory there first; otherwise, your new Eclipse will display old plug-ins and IDE modes which may not be installed.)
4. The latest Eclipse versions set the default search behavior to reuse the editor. This default behavior can be annoying because it prevents you from being able to simultaneously view more than one search result. Opening a new search result would reuse the editor tab and cause the previous search result to become unavailable. To configure Eclipse to open each search result in a new editor tab, do the following:
   • Go to menu “Windows->Preferences->General->Search”.
   • Uncheck the “Reuse editors to show matches” option.

Install Javascript Development Tools (JSDT)

1. Run Eclipse.
2. Go to the Eclipse menu “Help->Install New Software…”
3. Click on the dropdown arrow for the “Work with:” box and select “Indigo – http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo”. (If you don’t see this entry, just type in the URL manually.) The table will populate with a bunch of Indigo-compatible plugins (it may take a couple of minutes to do so the first time).
4. Type “javascript” into the “type filter text” field to show only the Javascript related plugins.
5. Check the “JavaScript Development Tools (JSDT)” (under “Programming Languages”) and click Next, Next, accept the license, Finish.
6. Click on “Restart Now” to restart Eclipse.

Install PHP Development Tools (PDT)

To install the PDT, repeat the steps above with the following modifications:

4. Type “PHP” into the “type filter text” field to show only the PHP related plugins.
5. Check the “PHP Development Tools (PDT)” (under “Programming Languages”) and click Next, Next, accept the license, Finish.
6. Note: For Eclipse Juno, when I first selected the PDT under “Programming Languages”, the installation failed. When I then selected the PDT under “General Purpose Tools” after restarting Eclipse, it installed successfully. So if it fails for you, just restart Eclipse and try again with the PDT under “General Purpose Tools”.

Install Subversion Integration (Subclipse)

1. Run Eclipse.
2. Go to the Eclipse menu “Help->Install New Software…”
3. Type “http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.8.x” into the “Work with” field and the table will be updated with installation packages available at that location.
   • You can look up the latest Eclipse update site URL for Subclipse here.
4. Check the “Subclipse” package and click Next, Next, accept the license, Finish.
5. If the Security Warning dialog about the “unsigned content” appears, click Ok to accept.
6. Click on “Restart Now” to restart Eclipse.

Note: If you install a command line Subversion client (I’ve successfully used the CollabNet Subversion Client on Windows 7 64bit) and put it in the Windows search path (%PATH% environment variable), make sure that the Subversion client version is compatible with Subclipse. Otherwise, Subclipse will stop working. For example, Subclipse 1.8.x is compatible with Subversion 1.7.x.

Problem: I cannot pin Eclipse to the taskbar!

If you find that you cannot pin the running Eclipse icon (right-click menu doesn’t have the option) to the Windows 7 taskbar, it may be because Eclipse is using the JRE (“C:\Windows\System32\java.exe”), instead of the JDK. Even if you find the Eclipse.exe file directly and pin it (using the right-click menu), when you run Eclipse, the running Eclipse icon will be a separate, second icon in the taskbar.

The solution is to install the JDK (Java SDK 1.6 or newer), set the %JAVA_HOME% environmental variable to the JDK directory, and set the %PATH% to have “%JAVA_HOME%\bin” as the first entry. This will ensure that Eclipse will use the JDK and you will then be able to pin the running Eclipse icon to the taskbar.

1. Right click on Start->Computer and select Properties.
2. Click on the “Advanced system settings” link on the left and then the “Environment Variables” button.
3. Under “System variables”, click on the “New…” button, input JAVA_HOME as the name and the JDK installation path as the value, and click OK.
4. Under “System variables”, double-click on the “Path” variable and add “%JAVA_HOME%\bin;” (without double-quotes) to the front of the “Path” value, and click OK.
5. Run Eclipse and pin its icon to the taskbar.

Problem: Eclipse complains about a missing org.eclipse.swt jar file!

Note: This issue occurs with Eclipse Mars, a newer version than Indigo.

When attempting to do an Ant build, Eclipse throws the following error message: “The archive: C:/Program%20Files/eclipse_lunar/plugins/org.eclipse.swt.win32.win32.x86_64_3.104.0.v20150528-0211.jar which is referenced by the classpath, does not exist.”

This is an Eclipse Mars bug which occurs when Eclipse is installed under a directory path with a space in its name, such as “C:\Program Files”.

To fix, create the requested “C:\Program%20Files” as a symbolic link: