We set out on our journey by taking the first step in the previous chapter; here, we will take another step forward. In this chapter, we will start with the installation of an IDE, that is, Eclipse, and then get into the details of installation of Maven integration into the Eclipse plugin, that is, m2eclipse. The topics covered in this chapter are:
- Introduction to m2eclipse
- Downloading Eclipse
- Installing and launching Eclipse
- Methods to install m2eclipse
- Setting up Maven for use
m2eclipse is a plugin that provides Maven integration with Eclipse. It intends to bridge the gap between Eclipse and Maven, help to create projects using simple intuitive interfaces from Maven Archetypes, and launch and manage the projects build using a simple editor. It makes the use of Maven right from the IDE so much easier. Some of the features provided by m2eclipse are as follows:
- Creating and importing Maven projects
- Launching the Maven build from within Eclipse
- Dependency management for the Eclipse build path
- Automatic dependency downloads and updates
- Materializing a project
- Browsing and searching remote Maven repositories
- Providing support for multimodule Maven projects
Apart from the preceding features, in conjunction with different m2e connectors and the Mylyn plugin, it provides the ability to communicate with code versioning repositories and task-based interfaces.
m2eclipse has been around since 2006 and is credited to Eugene Kuleshov. It was developed under the Codehaus community for 2 years before it was moved to the Eclipse Foundation in 2008.