Installing Eclipse for Arc 9 Development

First, download Eclipse for Java Developers. Unzip this file wherever you want Eclipse to live - it doesn't need installing, you just run eclipse.exe from the unzipped directory. Don't run it yet though.

Run eclipse. If it asks for a directory to use, open windows explorer and make one (on our systems, use m:\java\eclipse\). Go back to Eclipse and give it the directory you've set up, and click the option for it to use it as the default. On our systems it shouldn't ask for this directory, but it may.

Go to Help menu -> Install New Software...

In the Work with: box, type http://downloads.esri.com/EDN/java/plugins/eclipse and then press the return/enter key. "Arc GIS Update Site" should appear in the box below, with a little triangle next to it.

Expand the list of available plugins by clicking the triangle and select all the plugins except ArcGIS Engine and ArcGIS Server. Click Next and work though the Wizard. At the end it will ask you if you want to restart. Do so.

When you restart eclipse it will ask you where Arc is installed. Navigate to this. It is probably in c:\Program Files\ArcGIS

Eclipse will open with an introductory screen that should now have an option for "Getting Started with ArcGIS Java". If you click this you'll see various information sets. If you close this screen, you can get back to it by going to Help -> Help Contents -> ArcGIS