Eclipse Setup¶

Eclipse Setup

Introduction¶

This section describes how to install Eclipse and set up the FWD project in it. It is assumed that the FWD trunk (or a custom branch) has been checked out in the ~/projects/fwd/trunk directory, and the customer application has been checked out in the ~/projects/fwd directory.

Install the IDE¶

The commands do not need to be executed inside the fbash.sh or dbash.sh script environments.

Via the official website installer¶

1. Download the installer from the official website, taking into account the operating system in use. For Eclipse, the installer can be accessed at https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/.

2a. For Linux-based systems, the downloaded content might consists of an archive that will need to be unzipped. To do so, run the command in a terminal:

tar -xvf ~/Downloads/eclipse-inst-jre-linux64.tar.gz

Note that the path or the archive name might need to be adjusted.

2b. In Windows, the download can be either the executable directly, or an archive that will need to be unzipped. If it's the latter, right click on the archive and select Extract here.

3a. For Linux-based systems, navigate to the directory that was generated after the extraction, and run the installer:

cd eclipse-installer
./eclipse-inst

When the installation window appears on screen, select Eclipse IDE for Java Developers. Afterwards, configure the Installation Folder path, and press Install.

3b. In Windows, double-click the executable in order to start the installer.

When the installation window appears on screen, select Eclipse IDE for Java Developers. Afterwards, configure the Installation Folder path, and press Install.

4a. To open the IDE, navigate to the installation folder and run the application.

In Linux, this can be achieved by doing:

cd <path_to_installation>
eclipse

In Windows, double-click the IDE icon from the installation folder.

4b. Open the IDE by searching its name in the search bar.

Via snap (Linux)¶

1. Open a terminal and run the following command:

sudo snap install eclipse --classic

Usually, Linux-based installations come with snap preinstalled, but in case of an error, you can install and enable snap via:

sudo apt install snapd
sudo systemctl enable snad
sudo systemctl start snapd

2a. The first way of opening the IDE is to run its corresponding command in the terminal. In Eclipse case, this would be:

eclipse

2b. Another option is to search for the IDE icon in the OS search bar and open it from there, assuming it didn't already provide a desktop entry which can be double-clicked.

Configure the IDE¶

In some cases, the default configuration values do not match the requirements, so adjustments need to be made.

1. Go to the installation folder and edit the configuration file. For Eclipse, this would be eclipse.ini:

cd <path_to_installation>
gedit eclipse.ini

Note that any text editor can be used to edit the file.

Things to potentially improve:

Xms value - the starting amount of RAM that the Java Virtual Machine will claim when the IDE is opened.
Xmx value - the maximum amount of RAM that the Java Virtual Machine is allowed to consume.

It is recommended to add these lines:

-Xmx8g
-Xms2g

which will allow to load and work with large projects.

Hardware acceleration rendering¶

If you are experiencing issues such as the IDE crashing with error SWT call to Webkit timed out or text failing to render properly, you might want to disable hardware-accelerated rendering. To do this, a command needs to be executed before starting the IDE. For convenience, a script can be created to execute the command automatically:

cd <path_to_installation>
gedit eclipse.sh

And in the created script put:

#/bin/sh
export WEBKIT_DISABLE_COMPOSITING_MODE=1
./eclipse

When opening the IDE now, run the script rather than the application itself:

./eclipse.sh

Choose default JDK¶

Currently, FWD development and runtime works with JDK 17. In the command line, try running java -version - if this shows openjdk version "17.0.18" 2026-01-20, then JDK is already installed. If not, install it via:

sudo apt install openjdk-17-jdk-headless

After this, start Eclipse and, in the menubar, open Window -> Preferences:

navigate in the tree to Java -> Installed JREs. Check if a Java 17 JDK appears - if not, check the installation again. Select the Java 17 line and click Apply.
navigate in the tree to Java -> Compiler and choose and choose Java 17 in the Compiler compliance level line. Click Apply and close

Configure the FWD project¶

The FWD project can be configured in the IDE. This allows checking the Java sources, testing changes, debugging.

1. Create an empty Java project. This can be done via File > New > Java Project in the taskbar at the top of the IDE, or by right-clicking in the Package Explorer tab and selecting New > Java Project.

2. Give the project a name. This will usually be the application name. In the JRE section, select use default JRE (last option) - this needs to specify Java 17. After that, click on Finish, which will trigger the project generation.

3. If a src folder has been created automatically in the project, delete it by right-clicking on it and selecting Delete.

4. Open the Properties window by right-clicking on the Project and selecting Properties. From here, navigate to the Java Build Path section, where a couple of things will be configured:

In the Source tab, the project sources need to be linked. To do this, click on Link Source..., then Browse..., and select the src folder from the FWD customer application project. After this, click on Finish to complete the process of linking the Java sources.
- link the FWD project sources, like ~/projects/fwd/trunk/src
- if the application is very large (~10k of converted .java files or more), it is not recommended to link the source - just include the jar in the step bellow.
In the Libraries section, select Classpath line, and:
- click on Add External JARs... and navigate to the build/lib/ folder of the FWD project (like ~/projects/trunk/fwd/build/lib/) - select everything and click Open. This will attach all the dependencies required to compile FWD in Eclipse.
- click on Add External JARs... and navigate to the <project_name>/deploy/lib directory. In here, select everything and click Open. This will attach all the dependencies that FWD needs to debug the converted application.
Click on Apply and close to apply the changes and close the Properties tab.

In the bottom right corner, a bar should be loading, which denotes that the project is building, the sources are getting compiled, and the JARs are being loaded.

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