Installation Guide

If you are looking for the source code of eclipse4sl, you'll get the download informations from the Community page.

eclipse4SL brings 2 experiences for the Eclipse Developer: it’s either you work in an Eclipse universe or you need to go back and forth between Eclipse and Microsoft Silverlight Tools (Visual Studio for development and Expression Blend for Design). We’ll call those configurations Pure Eclipse and Mixed Eclipse respectively.

1. Pure Eclipse configuration

If you want eclipse4SL to work Visual Studio and/or Expression Blend, you can follow the Pure Eclipse Configuration Steps, then take the Mixed Eclipse steps.

1.1 Pre-requisites

Check the following products are installed on your machine, or proceed to their installation in the following order :

• Windows XP SP2 (or above) or Windows Vista SP1
  Other OS are planned for future versions
• JDK 1.5.0_11 (or above)
• Eclipse Ganymede : any of the following Eclipse standard distribution
  • Eclipse Basic 3.4.1
  • Eclipse IDE for Java Developers
  • Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers (Recommended)
• .Net Framework 3.5 (or above)
  
  • Use the Bootstrapper Installer
  • Or download the full redistributable package dotnetfx35.exe and run it
• Silverlight 2 Runtime (2.0.31005.0 or above)
  
  • Go to this page http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/, at the right side, click on the "Window runtime". M1 release of eclipse4SL doesn't support other platforms yet.
• Silverlight 2 SDK

1.2 eclipse4SL installation

You’ve got 2 options to install the Eclipse Tools for Silverlight : Eclipse Update or Offline installation.

The Eclipse Update wizard consists in an online installation. You can use this solution if your machine is correctly connected to the Internet. The installation is pretty straightforward and it doesn't require deep knowledges of the Eclipse environment. The Eclipse update wizard finds and installs all the required plugins.

The offline installation is used when your machine is not connected to the Internet or in case there is a firewall that prevents to access the Eclipse update infrastructure. You will be asked to download all required plugins beforehand.

1.2.1. Eclipse Update Wizard

Below are the step by step instructions for configuring Eclipse IDE with the eclipse4SL plugin package.

To install eclipse4SL, open Eclipse, select Help->Software Updates....

Select the "Available Software" tab and click the "Add Site..." button.

In the Add Site dialog, fill in the Location with http://www.eclipse4sl.org/update/, which corresponds to the eclipse4SL Web update site. Then click OK. If you encounter an error, it may be because you forgot the last “/” in the URL or because you’ve got firewall restrictions. In the latter case, proceed with the Offline Installation procedure.

Select the Eclipse Tools for Microsoft Silverlight entry and click Install button. Please see below screenshot.

In the next dialog, check the Eclipse Tools for Microsoft Silverlight, click Next button.

Then read carefully the license agreement. If you accept all conditions, select I accept... option and click Finish button.

Now, restart your Eclipse for the changes to take effect.

To check the plugin installation is successful, you can select Help->About Eclipse SDK. In the dialog box you will see a new icon with the eclipse4SL logo, next to the Eclipse Icon. .

When you click on the eclipse4SL icon, you should see the picture like below. Click OK to finish.

1.2.2. Offline installation

eclipse4SL relies on the following additional plugins, which are not part of Eclipse Basic 3.4.1 distribution.

Therefore we recommend the all-in-one Eclipse distribution: Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers.

And the download one of eclipse4SL distributions below:

• eclipse4sl-runtime-1.0.0-M1.zip.
• eclipse4sl-SDK-1.0.0-M1.zip (will be released towards the end of October 2008)

Unzip and copy it into the folder where your Eclipse is installed, not in Eclipse folder. All plugins and features must install under the plugins and features folder in eclipse respectively.

2. Mixed mode

This configuration is best suited for Eclipse developpers who need to work with Visual Studio or Expression Blend developers and designers. It allows you to open Visual Studio and Expression Blend from Eclipse.

After following the Pure Eclipse configuration, installation steps,  proceed to the following installations :

• Visual Studio 2008 SP1
  • You may use the free Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Web Express Edition
  • Or install a Visual Studio 2008 Trial Edition and then upgrade it to SP1
    • Visual Studio Professional Edition
    • Or Visual Studio Team Suite  (Developper Edition)
    • Make sure you upgrade it to Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 SP1
• Then, add the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
• Expression Blend 2 SP1 (optional)
  • Install Expression Blend 2 Trial.
  • Upgrade it to Expression Blend 2  Service Pack 1.