Microsoft Silverlight plugin Environment

ESL 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.

Pure Eclipse configuration

Prerequisites

To build the application that is developed over this course of this tutorial. You will need to install the following applications:

ESL installation

You've got 2 options to install 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.

Eclipse Update Wizard

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

To install ESL, open eclipse, select Help->Software Updates....

Select Available Software tab and click Add Site button.

In the Add Site dialog, fill in the Location as http://www.eclipse4sl.org/update/, which corresponds to the ESL 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 Eclipse Tools for Microsoft Silverlight option and click Install button. Please see below screen shot.

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

Then read carefully the license agreenment. 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 ESL logo, next to the Eclipse Icon.

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

Offline installation

ESL relies on the following additional plugins, which are not part of Eclipse Basic 3.4.1 distribution .
    - EMF v2.4.1 Runtime Minimum executable code:                     emf-runtime-2.4.1.zip or equivalent
    - EMF XSD v2.4.1 Runtime Minimum executable code:               xsd-runtime-2.4.1.zip or equivalent
    - Graphical Editing Framework (GEF):                                     GEF-SDK-3.4.1.zip or equivalent
    - Web Standard Tools:                                                        wtp-wst-R-3.0.2.zip or equivalent
Therefore we recommend the all-in-one Eclipse distribution: Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers

And then download one of ESL distributions below:
    - eclipse4sl-runtime-1.0.0.M2_20090202.zip.
    - eclipse4sl-SDK-1.0.0.M2_20090202.zip

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.

Launch configuration

Eclipse launch configuration should be setted as:
    - vmargs
    - Xms90m
    - Xmx456m
    - XX:PermSize=128m

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 installation:

In case of using VS 2010, the variables in the Path page of Preferences must be setup in consistant state:

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