03 Eclipse Build Environment

Recommended Plugins

  • The M2Eclipse plugin is strongly recommended as it will allow easy use of a Maven 2 project from within Eclipse.
  • Sysdeo Tomcat Plugin which allows you to control a Tomcat instance from within Eclipse and easily debug Java code running in Tomcat.
  • SpringIDE which provides auto-completion, bean lookup, AOP assistance and other features for working with Spring contexts.
    • MyEclipse is a cheap commercial alternative.
  • Subclipse which is very useful for checking out source from subversion repositories.

Importing the project

If you are using a downloaded version of uPortal you should simply be able to add the uPortal project to your Eclipse workspace using the "File > Import..." command and selecting "Existing Projects into Workspace". Select the uPortal folder which contains the .classpath and .project files for Eclipse.

Building uPortal

Eclipse ships with Ant 1.7.0 which has a known bug that does not allow it to work with uPortal's build.xml. You can either use the command line to run the uPortal Ant tasks using Ant 1.6.5 or go into the "Ant > Runtime" section of the Eclipse preferences and select an Ant 1.6.5 distribution, this will allow you to run the uPortal Ant tasks from within Eclipse.