Installing the Force.com IDE

The Force.com IDE is an important tool in the Force.com development arena. You can find the most up-to-date instructions for installing the IDE at the home page for all Force.com developers—developer.force.com.

1.	On the home page of developer.force.com, select the Tools option in the Wiki menu on the left, as shown below. Figure 132. The Tools link on the developer.force.com home page [View full size image]
2.	Select the link for the Force.com IDE. You will be taken to a page with some descriptions of the latest release of the IDE, as well as a section entitled Getting Started. In this section, you will find links to installation instructions for the Force.com IDE, with a choice of using different versions of Eclipse or upgrading an existing Force.com IDE installation. This page also includes directions on installing Eclipse, if you do not have it already.
3.	Click one of the installation options, which will take you to a page similar to the one below.

Figure 133. Installation home page for the Force.com IDE

[View full size image]

At the top of the page, you can see links that will help you install the prerequisite software, the Java Runtime Environment, and the core version of Eclipse. The remainder of the page contains step by step instructions for installing the Force.com IDE plug-in into the Eclipse environment.

Once you complete these installation tasks, you are ready to start using the Force.com IDE.