Install the application as an Eclipse plugin

Install the application as an Eclipse Plugin

Eclipse Free BIRD Tools can run as a plugin for the popular Eclipse IDE.

To get started we can complete a basic install of Eclipse IDE like this:

Install basic Eclipse IDE

Go to the website https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

Choose "Download 64-bit"

Choose Download which will download the Eclipse Installer.

If using Windows , then run the downloaded exe.

If using linux/unix then extract the downloaded tar file, and run/double-click the eclipse_inst file.

You might need admin privileges for this.

Click on the 3 bars on the top right-hand corner of the installer, and choose "Advanced Mode"

You may be asked if you want to keep the installer in one place, it is up to you.

Choose the product "Eclipse Platform", Choose "Latest Release", Select a JRE (Java Runtime Environment) note that some JRE's come with the installer:

Amendment You should choose JRE 17 and Latest Release(which is currently 2024-03)

Click Next, Then Next again, and then choose an installation folder name, by default ide-latest-released is chosen, this is assumed to be under your home directory (e.g. C:\Users\Neil) or root directory (e.g. C:)

If you select a bundle pool then future installations will be quicker.

Click Next, Then click Finish.

The Eclipse IDE will start, and ask you to choose a directory as your workspace, choose any empty directory as below:

You can click Finish on the installer.

Then you need to install the Eclipse Free BIRD Tools features, It is also useful to install a feature called the Sirius Specifier Environment, which gives us access to nice visualizations and navigation.

Install the Eclipse Free BIRD Tools features

There are 2 ways to install the Eclipse Free BIRD Tools Features into the Eclipse IDE.

for both, the first step is to choose help->install software on the Eclipse IDE menu bar.

Then you need to find the location of the features. If you built the app from source code, then the features are in the produced zip file. If you want to use pre-built features, you can use the 'update site' https://download.eclipse.org/efbt/snapshots/

install zip created by building the application from source

You can install the produced zip file ( .zip) by clicking "Add".

Then clicking Archive, to find the zip file for the location field.

It is best to have first copied the zip file from its original location to a location where it won't keep getting over-written if you rebuild the application. For the name you can set it to EFBT_archive like so:

Install from the update site

You can install the produced zip file ( .zip) by clicking "add" as below. Set the location field to be https://download.eclipse.org/efbt/snapshots/ You can set the name field to be EFBT_site, like this:

Then click Add.

Then click "Select All" to select all the features:

Then click Next.

Then click Next again.

Then accept the licenses, and then click Finish.

You may see warning because the features are not in a signed with a certificate like this, you can click "install anyway"

When prompted you can then choose "Restart Now" which will restart the application.

Make sure there is not too little memory allocated

In the chosen install directory , under the sub-directory eclipse, you should see the executable and also a file called eclipse.ini. eclipse.ini is a configuration file which by default provides very little memory for the eclipse IDE. If you see the following line :

-Xmx512m

you should change it to

-Xmx4096m

This is the install complete. In future you can run the executable.