Developing with Eclipse

How to use Eclipse for Confluence plugin development

Eclipse can be used to make Confluence plugin development easier.

Install Eclipse
Use Subversion
- Install the SVN plugin for Eclipse
- Add the Confluence Subversion site to Eclipse
  - Window->Open perspective and then find the Subversion perspective
  - https://svn.atlassian.com/svn/public/contrib/confluence/
Use Maven
- Install Maven 1.0.x
- Install the Maven (1.x) Eclipse plugin by downloading the jar and copying to the Eclipse plugin directory
- Setup your MAVEN_REPO property in Eclipse to point to your Eclipse workspace location
```
maven eclipse:add-maven-repo -Dmaven.eclipse.workspace=C:/...
```

The following assumes you have a somewhat standard plugin directory structure that you created or checked out from Subversion. For example:

xxx-plugin
   trunk
      src
         etc
         java
      target

Edit the project.xml file to make sure it contains all the dependencies needed
- This must be done before generating the Eclipse project files
- If the dependencies need to be changed later, the Eclipse project files will need to be re-generated and then in Eclipse, refresh your project using right click -> Refresh
Generate the Eclipse project and classpath files
- From a command line, cd to the trunk directory
```
cd .../xxx-plugin/trunk
maven eclipse
```
Move the .project and .classfile files to the xxx-plugin directory
Import the project by pointing at the plugin directory (that now contains a .project file!)
- Right click Import
- Choose Existing Projects into Workspace
- Customize the build path source using right click on project -> Build Path -> Configure Build Path
  - removing the default location
  - adding /trunk/src/etc
  - adding /trunk/src/java
  - adding /trunk (last)
Add MAVEN_REPO classpath variable to Eclipse
- This only needs to be done for the first plugin you setup
- MAVEN_REPO is used in the Maven generated .classpath file that contains references to all the dependencies defined to Maven in the project.xml and related files
- Customize the build path libraries using right click on project -> Build Path -> Configure Build Path
- Add a new variable that points to your maven repository directory

Eclipse should now analyse the plugin code and report errors
Once all errors are fixed in Eclipse, a maven build (run outside Eclipse) should be clean