Brian Meloche's Blog I'll blog about ColdFusion, weight loss, podcasting and life with too many pets! :-)

Since I was first introduced to Eclipse about 3 1/2 years ago (via CFEclipse), I've had a love/hate relationship with it.

I've loved the power it gives you, particularly in most of CFEclipse (though it's also but I've found myself going back to other IDEs and editors. I've always found Eclipse to be slow, bloated and often buggy. Mind you, those are often the fault of the plugins I use, but that's always been a sore spot.

Eclipse just is a pig. Well, that's what I thought, but I'll get back to that in a minute.

I never know... WHICH version of Eclipse should I run? I've tried the J2EE version, but that's the biggest one, and as a CF developer, installs a lot of plugins that I don't use, and although some of those I may use or use occasionally, many of those plugins I'll never use. The Java version in the past gave me problems, but that was a couple of versions back. I've thought of running the PHP version, but... I don't use PHP much, so that's not a great match. Classic? Yeah, but that installs all the source code, and I don't see myself in the immediate future needing that. I've tried the newer interactive builds like YOXOS, Pulse and I even tried MyEclipse once (trial). I've tried standalones of Flex Builder (now Flash Builder), and now ColdFusion Builder. I thought maybe CFBuilder would be the ticket - but... well, it's a beta, and even that's not been the best experience.

I have wanted a stripped down Eclipse - one that had only the plugins that I installed, and nothing more. I've looked, but hadn't found it.

Recently, I've been running a Vista 64-bit edition, and have just converted my laptop (as of last night) to Windows 7 64-bit to take advantage of all the RAM I could throw at it. Strangely, I searched, but could only find a 64-bit for Linux. Surely, I thought, there HAD to be a Windows 64-bit.

That's where these two journeys meet each other.

Thanks to a reply on a list that I belong to (thanks, Andrew), I've found both (for Galileo - Version 3.5 - the latest at the time of writing) here:

http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops/R-3.5-200906111540/

YES, there IS a Windows 64-bit version of Eclipse. It doesn't seem to exist as a package, but it definitely exists. Mac lovers? There's a 64-bit OSX version, too.

The category for the one that's stripped down, with no extra extensions is called: Platform Runtime Binary. You'll find that about half way down the page.

Now, that said, you'll have to download and install the plugins you want... but that's just it... install Eclipse as small as you need to, and don't add stuff you don't need. In previous versions of Eclipse, this would have been a major pain, but Galileo will include the dependencies you need.

Anyway, it was a MAJOR find when I found both the 64-bit Windows Eclipse AND the stripped down Eclipse all in one! I thought I should share it... since it took ME so long to find it.

Kudos to Andrew Scott for the tip that helped me solve two problems at once!

UPDATE 1: Get the latest downloads here:

http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/

That page will always have a link to latest and greatest. For example, the June 11th build is linked today, but when 3.5.1 comes out, and newer releases as they come out, you'll find the links here. You'll also find early Eclipse 3.6 builds as well as the 3.4 (Ganymede) builds.

UPDATE 2: Eclipse 3.5.1 came out late last week so the latest and greatest can be found at:

http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops/R-3.5.1-200909170800/index.php

(I'll update this post with more links later, if you need them...)