Eclipse is a widely used open-source IDE for Java. The main strengths are the powerful support for refactoring and Java coding in general. This article describes in a few steps how to setup Eclipse for CVS access to RapidMiner (formerly YALE), how to build RapidMiner from source code, and how to run RapidMiner directly from Eclipse.

There are two phases in setting up Eclipse for RapidMiner: using the built-in CVS client  in order to download RapidMiner and defining the correct settings for running RapidMiner directly from Eclipse. Later on, we will also describe how you can download and install plugins for RapidMiner.

Setting up CVS access
 

1.) You start by adding a new project from the file menu. Then you should select "Checkout projects from CVS":

2.) In the following dialog you should select "Create a new repository location" before you proceed with "Next":

3.) In the next dialog you should fill in the information for anonymous CVS access. You can find this information at our CVS site:

4.) After proceeding with "Next" you have to specify the module which should be checked out. This module is called "yale": (the former name of RapidMiner).

5.) In the next dialog you can change the project name. The default value "yale" is just fine since some of the plugin projects depend on this name. You can start downloading RapidMiner by pressing "Finish":

6.) Now you have to wait until Eclipse has completely downloaded RapidMiner. That might take some minutes:

It should not be necessary to define further project settings in order to edit or compile RapidMiner. Eclipse should now build your workspace.

Important notes:

• If the compilation process leads to errors (several thousands), you might have to change the compiler compliance level to "5.0" since RapidMiner requires at least Java 5. The default for current Eclipse installations seems to be compliance level "1.4" which will lead to a huge amount of errors.
• If RapidMiner cannot be started (see below) after compilation and shows the error message
  
  

        ERROR: cannot find resources. Probably the ant target 
        'copy-resources' must be performed!
    

  this indicates that RapidMi was not able to find the resource files (icons etc.). Just perform the Ant target copy-resources from the delivered Ant build.xml file. This is usually only necessary after the first check-out, after huge changes (e.g. new libraries are introduced), or after adapting the file operators.xml. In order to run this target within Eclipse, right click on the file build.xml in the main directory of RapidMiner and choose Run As -> Ant Build. If Eclipse/Ant complies that it cannot be executed since JAVA_HOME is not properly set, just create a new environment variable JAVA_HOME and point it to the installation directory of your JDK (which usually should have been done automatically during the installation of Java).

Running RapidMiner from Eclipse

7.) If everything has been compiled you might want to run RapidMiner directly from Eclipse. Select "Run" from the "Run" menu. There you can specify the main class "com.rapidminer.gui.RapidMinerGUI" (Attention: the name of the main class changed during the renaming of YALE into RapidMiner, the screenshot below still shows the old name):

8.) You might have to define where RapidMiner is located by setting the environment variable "rapidminer.home" (formerly "yale.home"), usually this should not be necessary any longer (the screenshot below still shows the definition of yale.home but it can almost always be omitted now). You might also want to increase the amount of usable memory:

Important note:
If RapidMiner cannot be started and shows the error message

      ERROR: cannot find resources. Probably the ant target 
      'copy-resources' must be performed!
  

Downloading and installing plugins

9.) You might also want to download and install some of the plugins available for RapidMiner. You can just check them out like any other CVS project (steps 1-4). Instead of the module name yale you have to specify the correct module name for the desired plugin. Just use the menu item "Use an existing module" and browse the repository for a complete list and download the desired plugin:

10.) The module will be downloaded and automatically built. You can install the plugin by using the internal Ant implementation of Eclipse. Just add the file "build.xml" of the downloaded plugin to the Ant build file browser of Eclipse and perform the target "install-plugin". After the next start of RapidMiner the plugin will be available. Please remember that you have to perform "install-plugin" every time you have made changes in the plugin code.