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More information is available at the Force.com IDE main page.

Getting Started

How do I install or upgrade to the latest Force.com IDE?

See the Force.com IDE for Eclipse installation page.

What Eclipse versions are compatible with the Force.com IDE?

Beginning with the Summer '09 release, the Force.com IDE plugin works with Eclipse 3.4.1 (Ganymede) and 3.3.2 (Europa).

The older Winter '09 and Spring '09 releases of the Force.com IDE are compatible with Eclipse 3.3.2 and Eclipse 3.2.2 (Callisto) only.

The Force.com IDE has not been tested with Eclipse 3.5 (Galileo - June 2008), and support on this platform is unavailable.

What user permissions must I have to use the Force.com IDE with my Salesforce organization?

The Force.com IDE communicates with Salesforce servers using the Metadata API, which requires a user's profile to have the "Customize Application" and Modify All Data permissions. These permissions are typically held only by System Administrators.

When you create a Developer Edition organization, your user login automatically gets System Administrator rights to that environment.

Is there a tutorial or guide to help get me started with using the Force.com IDE?

Yes. The Force.com IDE documentation contains a tutorial called Creating an App with the Force.com IDE. To view the documentation, start Eclipse and select Help > Help Contents, then go to Force.com IDE Library > Force.com Platform Tutorials > Tutorial: Creating an App with the Force.com IDE.

Trouble opening online help in Eclipse? See below.

Where can I find out about what is new in this release?

Information about the latest release of the Force.com IDE can be found in the Release Notes.

Using the Force.com IDE

How do I refresh the contents of my Force.com project?

You may refresh the contents of your Force.com project in their entirety or on a folder-by-folder or file-by-file basis. For example, right-click on a folder such as classes and select Force.com > Refresh from Server. Note that by refreshing the folder, all content will be overwritten.

Refreshing from the server does not delete local files from your project, so if a component was deleted from the server you will need to delete the file from your Force.com project manually.

How do I merge changes to metadata on salesforce.com servers with local changes in my project?

Use the Synchronize Perspective by right-clicking on your Force.com project and select Force.com > Synchronize with Server. You may use the arrows at the top right to select changes to accept locally. You may also perform global acceptance by right-clicking on an artifact and selecting to override the remote artifact or replace local with remote.

Since creating a project, my password has changed. How can I update my login credentials for a Force.com project?

You may update your Force.com project login credentials by right-clicking on the project folder and selecting Properties, then in the properties dialog clicking Force.com in the left nav.

Why can't I edit Apex Code in my project against a production organization?

Production organizations are the runtime environment for your Apex Code. Once Apex Code is compiled and persisted into an org it is live and can be immediately executed by users. For this reason all development of Apex Code must be performed in a development environment, either a Developer Edition account or on Sandbox. Once your code is ready and tested it can be promoted to your production environment through a controlled deployment process. Using a controlled deployment process assures that your code will compile and operate in your production system in the same manner which it did in your development environment.

For more information about the deployment process and available implementations please refer to the appropriate chapter in the Apex Code language reference.

Why are the files inside the Referenced Packages folder read-only?

If a file is in a managed package that was installed to the organization, it is shown in the Force.com IDE project under Referenced Packages but is read-only. The Force.com IDE does not support making subscriber modifications to installed managed packages. Instead, use a browser to make changes directly in Setup.

Troubleshooting and Support

Where can I ask questions or get help with the Force.com IDE?

Customers with Developer Support may contact salesforce.com's Global Support organization for help with their Force.com IDE questions.

You may also review posts or post a question or discussion topic to the Development discussion forum.

Where can I find out about about known issues?

Information about known issues in the Force.com IDE can be found in the Release Notes.

Where can I find extra information, such as logs, to troubleshoot a Force.com IDE issue?

Force.com IDE log can be viewed by selecting Help > Show Force.com IDE Log. The Log Viewer lists the events recorded in the log, and buttons are available to view the raw log content in an Eclipse edtor or open the log's containing folder in order access it directly from your operating system.

How do I solve out of memory issues?

If you are experiencing java.lang.OutOfMemoryError exceptions while using the Force.com IDE, you need to increase the amount of memory available to Eclipse.

By default, Eclipse is limited to a maximum of 256MB of memory, but we recommend raising that to 512MB or 1024MB. To increase Eclipse's minimum memory to 512MB and maximum accessible memory to 1024MB, add the following parameter to the Eclipse start-up command-line or to the eclipse.ini control file:

-vmargs -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m

More information on Eclipse memory settings is available on eclipse.org:

• How do I increase the heap size available to Eclipse?
• Running Eclipse

How do I solve "Deployment of 'package.xml' FAILED - Bad manifest file:Invalid byte 1 of 1-byte UTF-8 sequence"?

This issue has been seen by some Force.com IDE users running Windows with a non-western character set. The Force.com IDE always saves files to disk in UTF-8 format, but in this case it is also necessary to force the JVM to use UTF-8 as its default file encoding. To set the JVM file encoding to UTF-8, add the following parameter to the Eclipse start-up command-line or to the eclipse.ini control file:

-vmargs -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8

When I open a Force.com editor in Eclipse 3.4, I get an error "org.eclipse.wst.sse.ui.StructuredTextEditor.isBlockSelectionModeEnabled()Z". What should I do?

Solved by Developer Force community member MATTYBME (View Thread):

1. Help -> Software Updates

2. Click on "Revert Configuration

3. My current (broken) configuration had "Eclipse XML editors and tools" version 3.1

4. Find the configuration that has Eclipse XML editors..." version 3.0.4.<date><key>

5. select that configuration and click "Finish"

6. The workbench will restart

The "XML Editors" version that works is: 3.0.4v200811211541<key>.

It may break when updated to: 3.1.0,v200905240756<key>.