Installing the ShellEd 1.0.4 Eclipse Plugin in Windows XP

If you use the Eclipse IDE to write shell scripts for fun, money, or both (/self_raises_hand), then I think you'll enjoy using the ShellEd plugin for Eclipse. It provides syntax highlighting and integrated man page content assist. But why take my word for it...here's what the author(s) have to say:

ShellEd is a superb shell script editor for Eclipse. The great benefit of this plugin is the integration of man page information for content assist and text hover. Check it out!

In the past, getting ShellEd to work with Eclipse could be annoying at times, depending on your OS/Eclipse version(s). However, I am happy to report that ShellEd 1.0.4 installs easily and appears to work perfectly on the following system:

• WinXP SP2
• Sun Java 1.6, Standard Edition, build 1.6.0_11-b03
• Eclipse Version: 3.4.2, Build id: M20090211-1700

The install procedure is simple:

1. Download shelled_1_0_4.zip from the ShellEd SourceForge site. URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/shelled
2. Unzip shelled_1_0_4.zip to a directory that will be your local install source; I used C:\eclipse_local_install_sources\shelled_1_0_4. NOTE: Your local install source dir should not be under your eclipse\* folder structure!
3. In Eclipse, navigate to Help -> Software Updates -> Available Software -> Add Site... -> Local... and select the C:\eclipse_local_install_sources\shelled_1_0_4 folder. You should now have a new location under Available Software called C:\eclipse_local_install_sources\shelled_1_0_4.
4. Expand C:\eclipse_local_install_sources\shelled_1_0_4 -> Uncategorized -> ShellEd. You should see version 1.0.4 for ShellEd. Check the ShellEd box and click Install.
5. Follow the prompts, and restart Eclipse when prompted. ShellEd 1.0.4 should now be working.
6. Open a *.sh file and verify that the syntax highlighting is working. You can also check the file associations by navigating to Window -> Preferences -> General -> Editors -> File Associations. Scroll through the file extensions list in the File Associations pane, and verify that you see an icon that looks like a piece of paper with the upper right corner folded and the letters SH in the center of the icon. This icon should appear next to files with shell script extensions (*.sh, *.csh, *.ksh, *.zsh, *.bash, etc).

I've been able to get it working on SLED 10 SP2/Eclipse 3.3, but it required a bunch of manual steps that were performed outside of the Eclipse application. If there's interest and if I have time, perhaps I'll cover those in another post.

Happy Bash-scripting to you.

-MrCA