10 Must Have Eclipse Plugins for Java Beginners

Become a better Java developer by using production-grade and freely available Eclipse plugins that boosts productivity.

1. Introduction

Eclipse is one of the most popular IDEs when it comes to Java programming. With its huge community of Java developers, many open-source plugins have been born. These plugins have become so important and easily integrated into the development workflow. More importantly, most of these plugins are freely available in the Eclipse marketplace.

2. EGIT

Git has long surpassed SVN as the favorite when it comes to versioning a project. It is distributed, which means every member of a project has a full copy of its entire code revision history. This makes certain operations such as branching, merging, searching history, diff comparison, and more available in a local environment.

Not so long ago, these powerful operations are only accessible within the terminal, but not anymore as EGIT becomes available. Now, these operations have become part of the Eclipse context menu that you can execute without even knowing the actual command.

3. Maven

• Maven is a project management and a build automation tool used primarily by Java programmers to manage the complete build life cycle of a project. Maven provides the following benefits:
• It manages the project dependencies in a central local directory, so the project doesn't need to store 3rd party libraries in source control.
• With Maven, you can add a new dependency quickly.
• Maven can automatically identify transitive dependencies, download them, and include them in the project.
• Maven can use different plugins to do varying tasks such as generating JavaDoc, packaging the jar file, and more.
• It provides readily available project templates.

4. Sonarlint

Sonarlint is a one-stop-shop plugin that includes PMD, CheckStyle, FindBugs, and more. It works as a real-time spell checker giving, suggestions, and corrections as the code is being typed. It analyzes the code for potential bugs and optimization that helps in producing bug-free and high-quality code.

5. Codota

Codota is an AI plugin that learns as code is being written. It helps in making the code better by giving relevant suggestions it learned from many programs. With Codota you can code faster, prevent errors, and discover efficient ways to code.

6. DevStyle

DevStyle is a theming plugin that is available for free. With it, you can style your IDE according to your preference. It comes with preset themes in either light or dark varieties. It also provides a startup experience with a new and intuitive design.

7. And finally, Fira Code Font