Getting an IDE

An integrated development environment (IDE) is more than a code editor; it includes the tools for autocompletion, syntax, formatting, and other miscellaneous features, such as search and replace. IDEs have advanced features such as refactoring, building, testing, and running the programs with the help of runtime containers.

The popular IDEs are Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, and NetBeans. Of the three, Eclipse is the most popular and open source IDE available for Java. It has a big community and is frequently updated. It has a workspace and an extensible plugin system. The development potential of applications in a whole range of languages is endless. Some other development IDEs based on Eclipse include the following:

• If you are going to do only Spring development, then the derivative of Eclipse called Spring Tool Suite (STS) is a good option.
• There are also cloud IDEs such as Eclipse Che, touted as the next-generation Eclipse. It does not need any installation. You develop in a browser that connects to a Che server, which builds a workspace remotely (containing libraries, runtime, and dependencies) in a Docker container. As a result, you can develop from any machine and anyone can contribute to your project, with just a URL. If you think that is cool and have a need for a location- and machine-independent development, give it a spin.

For the purposes of this book, let's stick to the basic and hugely popular Eclipse. The current edition, at the time of writing this book, is Neon. A large community and configurable plugin support makes it the IDE of choice for cloud-based Java development.

Download the latest version from: https://www.eclipse.org/. Assuming you have JDK 8 or later installed, Eclipse should start up fine.

Configure a workspace that will store your project files and settings:

When you hit OK, the Eclipse IDE should open up. Eclipse Neon will automatically get you two important plugins we need for development:

• Git client: This will allow us to connect to a Git source control repository. This book assumes you use Git due to its popularity and features, but there are many older options in use in enterprises, such as Subversion and Perforce. In case you use the alternatives, download the respective plugin to your IDE by following the developer setup instructions given by your project team or in your team wiki. If these instructions do not exist, ask to build one for new team members to use.
• Maven support: Maven and Gradle are both great project management and configuration tools. They help with tasks such as getting dependencies, compiling, building, and so on. We chose Maven because of its maturity with the enterprises.

If you are coming across these two for the first time, please get familiar with both by reading up on their respective websites.