What You'll Need

All the software you'll need in this tutorial can be downloaded from the Internet for free. You'll need Eclipse—this tutorial was written using Eclipse 2.1.1—and we'll discuss where to get Eclipse in . Other software packages that we'll be downloading throughout the tutorial include the Tomcat web server and various CVS servers (which will allow you to share Eclipse projects with others). Eclipse is built to be extendible, and hundreds of Eclipse plug-ins are available for free downloading. Plug-ins let you add functionality to Eclipse—new built-in editors, code generators, software launchers, and more—and we'll take a look at a number of the most popular plug-ins in this tutorial. And in and , we'll develop our own Eclipse plug-ins.