 | Level: Intermediate John Fronckowiak (john@idcc.net), President, IDC Consulting Inc.
24 Jul 2007 Mac OS X is a powerful platform for Java™ development. While the
Java development
environment is fully integrated into Mac OS X, the Eclipse integrated development
environment (IDE) brings a fully
integrated Java development environment to Mac OS X that provides a consistent
cross-platform experience. Discover how to use this environment to import existing
Xcode projects into Eclipse, tweak key bindings, and integrate Eclipse with the
Mac OS X-bundled Concurrent Versions System (CVS).
Whether you're a Mac OS X Java developer working on cross-platform Java projects, a
Linux® developer switching to Mac OS X because of its UNIX®-based core, or a
general Java developer looking to develop applications targeted to Mac OS X, you'll
want to look at the Eclipse IDE because it
provides a solution to each of these development needs. While Mac OS X provides Xcode
as its primary Java development IDE, Eclipse provides
a more robust cross-platform development environment, with application frameworks for
reporting, database access, communications, graphics, and more, and a rich-client
platform framework for building applications.
If you've used Eclipse on Linux, Eclipse on Mac OS X will be simple.
Installation is a breeze. Go to the Eclipse download page (see Resources) and download the Mac OS X version of Eclipse IDE for
Java Developers. Download a gzipped .tar file, which you must expand into a folder
named Eclipse. Using the Finder, drag this folder into your Applications folder. To
launch Eclipse, simply double-click on the Eclipse application.
If you have used Eclipse on another platform, you'll see a familiar window. If you use
Xcode (the development IDE included with Mac OS X) for your development, your projects
are typically saved in your home directory. With Eclipse, your workspace is
automatically created in your Documents directory, and, by default, all your projects
are saved to this location.
Importing existing Xcode projects
Say you have Java projects you created in Xcode that you want to migrate to Eclipse.
Fortunately, migrating your existing applications to Eclipse is quite easy. To migrate
an existing application to Eclipse:
- In Eclipse, create a new Java project.
- From the File menu, choose New Project.
- In the New Project window, select the Java Project wizard (Figure 1). Click Next.
Figure 1. Select the Java Project wizard
- Name your new project, then select Create project from existing source, as
shown below.
Figure 2. Create a Java project from an existing source
- Click Browse to the locate the directory in which your existing project
resides, usually a location in your Home directory.
- Click Finish or click Next to continue the configuration of your new
project. By default, Eclipse automatically compiles all the .java files in your project directory.
- To ensure compilation, choose Project > Build Automatically. When Eclipse
compiles your application, any errors or problems appear in the Problems view at the
bottom of the Eclipse IDE window, as shown in Figure 3. If the Problems tab is not
displayed, choose Window > Show View > Problems.
Figure 3. The Eclipse workspace
Note: You may see several warnings if you created your application using an
existing Xcode application template. In this example, the project imported in Figure 3
was based on the Xcode Swing template project, so there are several warnings indicating
that a class does not declare a static final serialVersionUID, which is only important if you plan to serialize
these classes. You may find these warnings annoying, but there is a simple way to
remove them from the Problems view.
- Choose Eclipse > Preferences to display the Preferences window.
- In the left pane, expand Java, expand Compiler, then click Errors/Warnings.
- In the right pane, expand Potential programming problems, as shown below.
Figure 4. Remove warnings from the Problems view
- Change the Serializable class without serialVersionUID option from
Warning to Ignore.
- Click OK to save your new preferences. You will be prompted to rebuild your
application. When completed, these warnings will be removed from the Problems view.
If you're building a Swing-based application that uses menus, when you run your
application, the menu will be displayed as part of the application window, rather than
at the top of the screen, as typical with Mac OS X applications. By default, Xcode adds
arguments to the virtual machine to ensure that the top of the screen menu is
displayed. However, with Eclipse, you must manually add this argument. When you choose
Run > Run menu, the Run window appears. Click the Arguments
tab, as shown below.
Figure 5. The Run window
In the VM arguments box, type -Dapple.laf.useScreenMenuBar=true. Now, your Swing application menu
appears at the top of the window, instead of your application window, and will look like
a normal Mac OS X application. If your Java application is Standard Widget Toolkit
(SWT)-based, this argument is not required.
Tweaking your key bindings
If you're an experienced Mac user, you may find that a few of the Ctrl+key
combinations Eclipse uses aren't what you expect (or like). For example, if you're a
frequent Xcode or TextEdit user, you'll find that the shortcut keys for Find Next and
Find Previous are mapped to Command+K and Command+Shift+K, respectively,
instead of the Command+G and Command+Shift+G you're familiar with.
Fortunately, Eclipse provides a mechanism to edit your key bindings — the
Ctrl+key combinations you use to accomplish a specific task — to
your liking. To modify the key bindings, choose Eclipse > Preferences to
display the Preferences window. In the left pane, expand General, expand
Editors, then click Keys to display the View, as shown below.
Figure 6. Modify key bindings
To modify the key bindings for a function, select the command from the list (for
example, Find Next. Click Edit to display the Modify tab, shown in
Figure 7. In the Name box beneath Key Sequence, delete the current key
combination and simply hold down the combination of keys with which you want to replace
this function — in this case, Command+G. Click Add to save your new key combination.
Figure 7. Modify Command+key sequences
Note: Eclipse will keep the original key binding for the selected function, as
well. If you want to delete the original key binding, select it from the
Assignments list beneath Command, then click Remove.
Click View to return to the key bindings. You can modify the key bindings for
text editing, navigation, refactoring, run/debug, search, and source functions to your liking.
Mac OS X CVS integration
If you're going to build complex applications in Eclipse on Mac OS X, you want to take
advantage of version control. Eclipse provides integration with CVS, an open source
system for tracking different versions of your application's source code. Recall that
at its core, Mac OS X is based on a flavor of Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD)
Linux, so it comes bundled with a working, installed version of CVS.
The Apple Developer Connection Web site (see Resources)
provides an article that can guide you through the configuration of CVS on Mac OS X, so
I won't go through that process here. Instead, this article focuses on the CVS
command-line options. To integrate CVS with Eclipse, you must do a bit of tinkering.
First, you must enable Remote Login functionality on your computer. Be aware that
enabling remote login allows anyone with your username and password to access your
computer, so you'll be doing this at your own risk.
To enable remote login on Mac OS X:
- Click the Apple icon, then click System Preferences.
- In the System Preferences window, click the Sharing icon.
- Select Sharing to display the Sharing window.
- Select the Remote Login checkbox, shown in Figure 8, and the service will automatically start.
Figure 8. Enable Remote Login functionality
- Close the Systems Preferences window to save your changes.
To verify that Remote Login has been enabled, use the Terminal application, which
provides you with bash shell access. At the command prompt, type ssh localhost. Type your password, then exit to close your remote login session.
You can now add your Eclipse projects to the local CVS tree. Here's how:
- From the Package View, right-click your project folder, then click Team > Share
Project. The Share Project window appears, as shown below.
Figure 9. The Share Project window
- In the Host box, type
localhost. If you followed
the CVS configuration tutorial, you'll type /usr/local/cvsrep for the repository path.
- Type your username and password beneath Authentication.
- For the connection type, select extssh, then click Next.
- In the Enter Module Name window, select Use project name as module name,
as shown in Figure 10, then click Next.
Figure 10. Name the project
Eclipse connects to the CVS server and creates the module. When that process is
complete, Eclipse confirms check-in of the files into the repository. Click
Finish to display the Commit Wizard, which prompts you for a log entry. If this
is the first time you're checking in your project files, you can type something like
Project Start Check-in or First
Check-in. You're now able to use CVS to manage versioning within your application.
Cross-platform character encoding
Eclipse uses the local character set of the operating system when editing source files.
By default, Eclipse on Mac OS X uses the MacRoman character set. If you're working with
Eclipse on a cross-platform project, it's better to use UTF-8 character encoding. To
specify this encoding for all files in a project, right-click the project in the
Package Explorer view, then click Properties. Beneath Text file encoding,
select Other, then select UTF-8 from the list, as shown below.
Figure 11. Set the character encoding
Maximizing Eclipse performance on Mac OS X
Finally, there are a few other small things you can do to help maximize Eclipse
performance on Mac OS X. First, you can specify the minimum and maximum heap space that
the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) allocates. By default, Eclipse allocates between 40 and
256 MB of memory for the heap. To modify the amount of memory allocated, you must modify
the eclipse.ini file. To access eclipse.ini, right-click the Eclipse application icon,
then click Show Package Contents to open a new Finder window displaying a
Contents folder. Open the Contents folder, and then open the MacOS folder, in which the
eclipse.ini file resides.
Figure 12. The eclipse.ini file in TextEdit
Modify the value after the -Xms option to change the minimum
heap space and the value after the -Xmx option to change the
maximum heap space. For example, to use a heap size between 64 and 512 MB, change the
options to -Xms64m and -Xmx256m.
If you have Eclipse open, you must close and reopen Eclipse for these new options to take effect.
You can also experience performance gains by turning off automatic Content Assist,
which provides a list of suggested completions for partially entered strings. From the
Eclipse Preferences window, in the left pane, expand Java, expand
Editor, then click Content Assist. Then, clear the Enable Auto
Activation checkbox. You can still invoke Content Assist manually by using the
Shift+Space key combination.
Disabling automatic folding also results in performance gains in large projects. To
disable Automatic Folding, from the Eclipse Preferences window, in the left
pane, expand Java, expand Editor, then click Folding, then clear
the Enable Folding checkbox.
Conclusion
Mac OS X provides a familiar development environment for developers experienced with
Linux. Using the techniques outlined in this article, you can maximize your Eclipse
development experience on the Mac platform.
Resources Learn
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The Eclipse Platform newsgroups should be your first stop to discuss questions regarding Eclipse. (Selecting this will launch your default Usenet news reader application and open eclipse.platform.)
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About the author | 
| | John Fronckowiak is president and founder of IDC
Consulting Inc., and Western New York Web Design, LLC. He is also a clinical assistant
professor in computer information systems at Medaille College. He is also the author of
several books about programming, database design and development, and networking. |
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