The Perl integration in the Eclipse editor is probably the
best free development environment for Perl.
Eclipse is available as an Ubuntu package, but I don't recommend
it because it is a fairly old version and
it brings along too many extra packages.
The most recent eclipse packages are available at the
Eclipse home page:
I tend to favor going "small," but Eclipse's idea of small is
still pretty big. The distribution:
Eclipse IDE for Java Developers
is the right idea in terms of our needs. A recent version of
this (of size 85MB) is available from the Computer Science server:
Eclipse likes to name the major releases instead of numbering them,
but this is version 3.4.2.
Install as follows (assuming the Desktop is the download directory):
$ cd ~/Desktop
$ sudo tar xozf eclipse-java-galileo-SR1-linux-gtk.tar.gz -C /usr/local/
This creates the installation directory
/usr/local/eclipse
Create a Desktop Launcher
To create the launcher:
- Right-click on the desktop and select Create Launcher,
use the default Type of Application and
set the Name to eclipse.
-
Set the Command from the Browse button
(go through the File System) to:
/usr/local/eclipse/eclipse
-
Click on the icon (upper left) to replace it. Browse to
/usr/local/eclipse, select this folder, and
in the next popup select the icon.xpm image (the only one).
- Click OK.
Double-click to Launch. Say "yes" to the workspace, we can
always change it later.
When you get in, kill the Welcome screen.
Epic
The plugin software we want is called EPIC with the home URL:
My installation instructions are an interpretation of those available
through the
download link on the home site.
Locate
Help 
Install New Software
Click the Add button to generate the
Add Site popup.
Set
Name: epic
Location: http://www.epic-ide.org/updates
and click OK to close the window.
Check the EPIC Main Components checkbox in the list.
Click Next, select it (maybe not necessary),
then Next, accept the license, then Finish,
and continue through restarting the IDE.
When you're back in the IDE, select:
Window Open Perspective Other Perl
The Navigator window on the right is the key window for managing
the projects. If you need to reopen it, find it (as other windows) from
Window Show View Navigator.
Create perl basics project
If you haven't already done so,
go to the perl-basics.html document and
download the perl-basic.zip archive.
Then,
- unzip perl-basic.zip as the directory perl-basics.
-
Right-click on the navigator window, select
New Perl Project and give it
the name perl basics (the name doesn't have to match the archive directory).
Then Finish.
-
Select the project you created in the Navigator, right-click, and
select Import.
- From Import, select
General File System, then Next.
- Browse to set the From Directory
to the perl-basics folder.
Click OK.
- Click Select All, then Finish.
Expand the project in the Navigator window to
reveal the files listed. As an example of how to use this,
double-click on hello.pl to open it in the editor.
Click on the "green forward button"
(or Run Run)
to run the file. The output
appears in the Console window.
A useful modification is to right-click on the Console tab and
check the Detached. Then kill the Tasks window so that you have the
full length of the Eclipse IDE to edit the file.
© Robert M. Kline