This article describes how to install the JBoss Developer Tools plug-ins into the Eclipse IDE. You should already have Eclipse installed and configured.

JBoss Developer Tools is a bundle of Eclipse plug-ins for Eclipse which help when developing applications using a various frameworks, some of which are JBoss specific and some which are standards based, but still JBoss related. In particular this helps developers get to grips with Java EE 6 web development using JSF, CDI, EJB and JPA by integrating the use of these individual frameworks in the IDE.

For example, it provides tooling for the JPA standard and specifically the Hibernate implementation of JPA. Of most interest is the new Java Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI , JSR 299) tooling which can go hand in hand with their excellent JSF page editing.

You should start with an Eclipse installation that will support JBoss Tools (see the download page for more details on which Eclipse versions are supported.

Prerequisite Eclipse Plug-ins

Before we install JBoss tools, there are a some additional plug-ins that need installing first as prerequisites as described in the JBoss Tools install instructions. These plug-ins, as well as the JBoss Tools plug-ins themselves will be installed using the Eclipse update manager which is opened by opening the menu Help->Install New Software…. This manager has a list of URLs that Eclipse can use to locate and download plug-ins from remote locations called update sites.

1. Open the install manager by clicking the menu item Help->Install New Software….
2. In the install manager, click the Add button to add a new update site.
3. In the dialog that pops up, add BIRT as the Name, and set Location to http://download.eclipse.org/birt/update-site/2.5/. Click OK to close the dialog.
4. Back in the install manager, in the top drop down box select the BIRT site and you should see a list of available plug-ins appear in the main list area
5. Click the check box next to each of the plug-ins and click Next.
6. Once you agree to the licenses and click Finish Eclipse will download and install the plug-ins. Once complete, it will ask if you want to restart Eclipse now or later. Restart Eclipse now before we install additional plug-ins.
7. Repeat the above steps for the Maven m2Eclipse plug-ins. In the “Add Site” dialog, set the Name to m2Eclipse and the Location to http://m2eclipse.sonatype.org/sites/m2e/.
8. Once added, select the m2Eclipse site and check all the items in the plug-in list.
9. Once the m2Eclipse plug-ins are installed, opt to restart eclipse

Installing JBoss Tools

Now we will install the plug-ins for Boss Tools, again using update sites as in the previous steps.

1. Click Help->Install New Software… to open the install manager.
2. Add a new site called JBoss Tools. The Location for the site is http://download.jboss.org/jbosstools/updates/stable/galileo/. Click OK.
3. In the install manager, select the JBoss Tools site to download plug-ins from. You should see a long list of available plug-ins. Again, check them all and click Next.
4. Once it has calculated requirements and dependencies, you should be able to click Next again, and check the license agreement and click Next.
5. Finally, it will download and install the JBoss Tools plug-ins. This may take a while since the contents are in the region of just under 100 megabytes.
6. Again, once complete, you should restart Eclipse
7. You are done, you should now have a working installation of JBoss Developer Tools

Dependency Issues

Eclipse can have problems with missing dependencies indicating that there are missing required plug-ins. In such a case, see what plug-ins are missing in the Install Details tab in the Details section. Verify that you have downloaded the correct version of the Eclipse SDK as per the JBoss Tools instructions. Also make sure you downloaded the Eclipse SDK version for Java EE. If you need to access older versions of the Eclipse SDK, you can do so from this download page. Try searching online for the error message to see if it is a common problem.