Force.com IDE Installation

Available as a plug-in for the industry-leading, open-source Eclipse project, the Force.com IDE can be installed as a standalone application or added to your existing Eclipse distribution.

Install as Standalone Application

For users developing exclusively on the Force.com platform, these installers will download Eclipse code from a public mirror and configure the Force.com IDE to launch as a standalone application:

Once you have completed installation, go to Help | Software and Workspace Center and click the "Apply" button in the dashboard tab.

Note: You may need to install the Java JRE on your system. Be particularly careful about 64-bit vs 32-bit JRE/JDK installs, and make sure your operating system's environment / resource variables point to the right version on your system. Note that you may need to edit the force.com ini file to change vm parameters to avoid initialization bugs. And you may need to launch the IDE from a batch file to set parameters correctly.

Install as Eclipse Plugin

If you are already an Eclipse user, these instructions show you how to install the Force.com IDE into your existing Eclipse distribution or upgrade from a previous version.

Note: Eclipse 3.6 is the most recently supported version of Eclipse.

Upgrade from a Previous Version

For upgrades, go to Help | Software and Workspace Center, look for items that need to be upgraded (in the center column of the UI), and click the "Apply" button in the dashboard tab. For more information, see the following page:

Retrieved from "http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Force.com_IDE_Installation"