Getting Started Eclipse Plugins for Java Developers

Today I’ll be sharing some of the Eclipse plugins that I normally use on a regular basis as a Java Developer. Some are already installed when you download Eclipse, others need to be installed manually from the marketplace.

Available on Youtube

• Eclipse Plugins for Java Developer - FindBugs, Checkstyle, PMD
• Eclipse Plugins for Java Developer - Sonarlint, Maven, EGIT
• Eclipse Plugins for Java Developer - Theme, Font

Let’s start with:

1. Mylyn. Already available from Eclipse JavaEE. It helps with the task planning. It has the notion of repository and task, that you can connect to a 3rd party provider such as Trac, Mantis and more. It can also connect to a build management system such as Jenkins. You can create and manage a task like any other project management tool. https://www.eclipse.org/mylyn/
2. FindBugs. It analyzes the bytecode to identify potential software bugs. http://findbugs.sourceforge.net/downloads.html
3. Checkstyle. It checks your code comparing it to the default coding standard like spaces, variable names, etc. By default, there are 2 ready-made available configurations, Sun which is older and Google. Rules and checks are well-documented on their website https://checkstyle.sourceforge.io/.
4. PMD. Analyze your code and find flaws like unused variables, missing overrides, abstract class without abstract method, etc. Rules are available from their website https://pmd.github.io/pmd-6.18.0/pmd_rules_java.html. I think some of them need to be updated to take into consideration the latest changes in the Java framework.
5. Then we have Sonarlint which at first is basically just a combination of the 3 prior plugins. It provides a more comprehensive report though, as with a SonarQube the previous reports can be saved. https://www.sonarlint.org/
6. Memory Analyzer. It helps in finding memory leaks and reduce memory consumption. https://www.eclipse.org/mat/
7. Maven. A tool to manage a maven project.
8. EGit. It allows us to import the maven project from a repository. However, most of the time it is broken, thus, we need to import the project using pom.
9. How about the theme? If you are looking for a more Intellij like appearance, then you can try DevStyle. You just need to set the Workbench theme to Dark Gray and Editor theme to Intellij. Here is their website https://www.genuitec.com/products/devstyle/. The plugin is available from the marketplace too.
10. I’m not sure if it’s just us but most of the developers I know use the font Fira Code Retina available at https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode. Try it.
11. Codota. An intuitive code completion plugin that takes other developers' experience and preference as the basis. https://www.codota.com/

If you have programming related topics that you would like me to cover then please don’t hesitate to write in the comment section of this blog.

References

• https://www.eclipse.org/mylyn/
• http://findbugs.sourceforge.net/downloads.html
• https://checkstyle.sourceforge.io/config_design.html
• https://pmd.github.io/
• https://www.sonarlint.org
• https://www.sonarqube.org/downloads
• https://www.eclipse.org/mat
• https://www.genuitec.com/products/devstyle
• https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode
• https://www.codota.com/