Difficulty installing Eclipse on Ubuntu 7.04

As I mentioned in my last post, I was planning on installing Eclipse on my Ubuntu 7.04 box. Unfortunately, Ubuntu 7.04 uses Eclipse 3.2.2 rather than 3.3.0. That causes a whole host of problems to the point that I couldn't figure out how to get Subclipse installed. I may try to install it on my Gentoo box, but I'm not sure what Eclipse version is supported by Gentoo -- the package server is down due to a nasty injection bug... I may just have to use a different IDE when I'm on a Linux box.

My two favorite Linux distributions are Ubuntu and Gentoo. I like Ubuntu for its ease of installation and maintenance. I like Gentoo for all the latest packages in portage. Unfortunately, Ubuntu suffers for having older versions of most applications and Gentoo requires a whole lot of maintenance. If only there was a happy middle ground...

Finally, I will probably have to change my test project to something other than Pychess. Pychess uses GTK+ which doesn't work easily on Windows platforms -- and I would like to work on Linux, OS X, and Windows. It looks like I need to find a good Tkinter or PyQt based project.

Setting Up Eclipse for Python Development

I should have made this list while I was doing it, but here is what is required to set up Eclipse for developing Python code and using Subversion version control (I think!):

1. Get the following downloads (if you haven't already):
1. Python (2.5.1 is current as of this post)
   
2. Eclipse (I downloaded Eclipse Classic and 3.3.0 is current as of this post)
   
2. Install Python. Python has a great installer.
   
3. Install Eclipse. There doesn't seem to be an installer for Windows -- so you have to just extract to your Programs directory (or wherever you like).
4. Install dependency plugins in Eclipse. I'm not entirely certain what these plugins do, but they are required for the Eclipse Subversion and Pydev plugins to work. There are two you need to install via Help > Software Updates > Find and Install:
• One is Buckminster in Europa Discover Site > Other Tools. I checked everything with "Buckminster" in the title and unchecked "Eclipse Monkey."
• The other is Mylyn. Installation instructions are on the Mylyn site.
  
5. Install Subclipse. Installation instructions are on the Subclipse site.
6. Install Pydev. Fabio Zadrozny has great installation instructions for Pydev on his site. I would run through the example that Fabio provides to make sure everything works.
   

I have done this on a Windows XP setup and a Mac OS X setup and all seems to work fine. I will be setting this up on a Ubuntu box later as well. I haven't done anything but test this out with a quick "Hello World" command line application. Stay tuned for more...

Python Adventures

I've done a little bit of Python coding in the past, but it has always been using a simple text editor for a simple little project. Well, there are several things that are lining up to cause me to restart my Python explorations. They are:

• My favorite game, Eve, has put out an API that I would like to toy with.
• I've heard a lot about the open source collaboration model. At work, I am trying to encourage collaboration, and I think this model might provide some good insights so I would like to gather some first hand experience of collaborating on a small open source project. I am leaning towards Pychess. Chess is another favorite game of mine...
  
• I'd like to gain some experience using a IDE for python development. I'm going to try Eclipse.
• I've never done much GUI coding in Python -- I'd like to get a better feel for it.
• I've tinkered with Subversion before, but never on a project with others involved.
  

Finally, I'd like to record what I discover as I discover it and, hopefully, get some constructive comments from the world out there.