Preface

This book will help you find the answers about Eclipse, today's premier Java Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Eclipse is a great tool, but it's also a complicated one, and not everyone has the time to spend days trying to unravel it. That's where this book comes in; it unravels Eclipse for you.

Eclipse has long been needed in the Java world. There have been Java IDEs before, but not like this one. And if you've just been using the Java command-line compiler, javac, there's no comparison at all; Eclipse will revolutionize your programming. Eclipse is terrific because it's built to handle the details for you—syntax checking, error handling, adding imports as needed, targeting builds, commenting out blocks of code with a click, putting .jar files on the build path, refactoring, even reformatting your code. Eclipse makes it all happen for you. However, actually making it happen in Eclipse is up to you, and there's a steep learning curve.

This book reduces that learning curve. Got a problem? Just look up the appropriate recipe to find out how to solve it. Want to go back to the previously edited location? See Chapter 2. Want to extract an interface from your code with a few clicks? See Chapter 4. Want to create getter and setter methods with a few more mouse clicks? Check out Chapter 3. How about connecting Eclipse to a CVS repository? Take a look at Chapter 6.

This book lays out Eclipse, from the basics through the advanced. It's designed specifically to bring you up to speed on nearly any Eclipse question without wasting time. Eclipse is where the action is in Java today, and this book is all about mastering Eclipse.