Eclipse

I had an annoying problem on Windows 7 x64 with Helios x64 where I had pinned Eclipse to the taskbar but would see two icons whenever Eclipse was running. I found that the following workaround works with the option “Always combine, hide labels” for taskbar buttons.

• You must specify a -vm argument in your “eclipse.ini” file (in your Eclipse directory).
• The -vm argument in your “eclipse.ini” must point to the bin directory of your JDK or JRE (and not to javaw.exe). For me the argument is “C:/Program Files/Java/jdk1.6.0_27/bin/” without quotes.
• Unpin Eclipse from the taskbar or delete the shortcut
• Run “eclipse.exe” from Windows Explorer and choose your workspace
• Pin Eclipse to the taskbar after the splash screen has loaded and the main window is shown

Hope this helps.

When I first started working at Intelliware I was amazed at how efficient the developers were while working in Eclipse. Most of this efficiency and speed came from a deep knowledge of Eclipse’s keyboard shortcuts.

Here is my list of Eclipse keyboard shortcuts that every developer should know.

1. Ctrl-Shift-L: Show list of shortcuts
2. Ctrl-K: Find next
3. Ctrl-Shift-R: Open a file in your workspace. It supports CamelCase shorthand too, so “SBFil” will find “SomeBigFile.java” and “SBFile.java”
4. Ctrl-Shift-G: Find references for a class or method. Want to find who calls MyClass.getName()? Put your cursor on the getName() definition and hit Ctrl-Shift-G
5. F3: Drill into a method. This will jump from the code that calls the method into the method definition. Similar to holding Ctrl and clicking on the method call.
6. Ctrl-T: Open implementors of an interface. Very useful when using F3 to follow the flow of method calls.
7. Ctrl-O: Open a list of method declarations in the current class. Allows you to jump directly to the method using the arrow keys and enter. Bonus points: typing Ctrl-O again while the list is showing will also list method declarations from all superclasses
8. Ctrl-E: Shows a list that allows you to switch between open files
9. Alt-Shift-W: Locates the current file in the Navigation or Package Explorer tree.
10. Ctrl-L: Go to line number. You might want to show line numbers by default by changing the preference General>Editors>Text Editors
11. Ctrl-H: Find a string in all files. You can customize this to only show the File search by clicking the Customize button and unchecking the other options
12. Ctrl-Shift-O: Organize import statements. This also removes any unused imports.
13. Ctrl-Shift-F: Reformat the file

You should also familiarize yourself with the following debugging shortcuts

I had a problem recently where Eclipse couldn’t find my source files when remote debugging a particular application. It would stop and the breakpoint and show the class file with a “attach source” button, but pointing it to the source directory didn’t do anything.

It turns out that the solution was to add the project to the remote debug configuration.

This is done by “Run -> Debug configurations…”
Choose the remote config from the tree on the left
Click on the “Source” tab
Click on the “Add…” button
Follow the wizard.