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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-15T07:33:10+00:00

Having dealt with yet another stupid eclipse problem, I want to try to get

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Having dealt with yet another stupid eclipse problem, I want to try to get the lightest, most minimal Eclipse installation as possible.

To be clear, I use eclipse for two things:

  • Editing Java
  • Debugging Java

Everything else I do through Emacs/Zsh (editing JSP/XML/JS, file management, SVN check-in, etc). I have not found any aspect of working in Eclipse to do these tasks to be efficient or even reliable, so I do not want plug-ins that relate to it.

From the eclipse.org site, this is the lightest install of eclipse that they have, and I don’t want any of those things (Bugzilla, Mylyn, CVS xml_ui), and have actually had problems with each of them even though I do not use them.

So what is the minimal build I can get that will:

  1. Ignore SVN metadata
  2. Includes the full-featured editor (intellisense and type-finding)
  3. Includes the full-featured debugger (standard Eclipse/JDK)

Does not have any extra plug-ins, platforms, or “integrations” with other platforms, specifically, I don’t want to deal with plug-ins relating to:

Maven, JSP Validation, Javascript editing or validation, CVS or SVN, Mylyn, Spring or Hibernate “natures”, app servers like a bundled Tomcat/GlassFish/etc, J2EE tools, or anything of the like.

I do primarily Spring/Hibernate/web-mvc apps, and have never dealt with an Eclipse plug-in that handles any of it gracefully, I can work effectively with my own toolset, but Eclipse extensions do nothing but get in the way.

I have worked with plain eclipse up to Ganymede, MyEclipse (up to 7.5), and the latest version of Spring-SourceTools, and find that they are all saddled with buggy useless plug-ins (though the combination is always different).

Switching to NetBeans/Intellij is not an option, and my teammates work with SVN-controlled .class/.project files, so it pretty much has to be Eclipse.

Does anyone have any good advice on how I can save a few grey hairs?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The “Eclipse IDE for Java Developers” version isn’t the smallest one! Look for “Eclipse Classic” – it doesn’t contain most of the things you mentioned. It’s larger in download size only, because it comes with source code.

    See this comparison: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/compare.php

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