Chapter 1. Download and install Hibernate Tools

Hibernate tools can be used "standalone" via Ant 1.6.x or fully integrated into a Eclipse 3.2.x based IDE, such as JBoss Eclipse IDE or a default Eclipse 3.2.x installation. The following describes the install steps in these environments.

1.1. JBoss Eclipse IDE

JBoss Eclipse IDE 2.x includes Hibernate Tools and thus nothing is required besides downloading and installing JBoss Eclipse IDE. If you need to update to a newer version of the Hibernate Tools just follow the instructions in the Eclipse IDE section.

1.2. Eclipse IDE

To install into any Eclipse 3.2.x based Eclipse IDE you can either download the Hibernate Tools distribution from the Hibernate website or use the JBoss IDE Eclipse update site (see http://tools.hibernate.org for links to the update site).

If you download the Hibernate Tools distribution you need to place the /plugins and /feature directory into your eclipse directory or eclipse extensions directory. Sometimes Eclipse does not automatically detect new plugins and thus the tools will not be activated. To ensure eclipse sees these changes run eclipse with the -clean option. E.g. eclipse -clean Using the updatesite does not require any additional steps.

Tip: If you need more basic instructions on installing plugins and general usage of eclipse then check out https://eclipse-tutorial.dev.java.net/ and especially https://eclipse-tutorial.dev.java.net/visual-tutorials/updatemanager.html which covers using the update manager.

1.2.1. Usage of Eclipse WTP

The Hibernate tools plugins currently uses WTP 1.5.x which at this time is the latest stable release from the Eclipse Webtools project.

Because the WTP project not always have had proper versioning of their plugins there might exist WTP plugins in your existing eclipse directory from other Eclipse based projects that are from an earlier WTP release but has either the same version number or higher. It is thus recommended that if you have issues with WTP provided features to try and install the plugins on a clean install of eclipse to ensure there are no version-collisions.

The tools only include a subset of the WTP 1.5.x plugins, thus if you want full access to the WTP functionallity the full WTP 1.5.x SDK should be able to instal on top of the plugins without any problems.

1.3. Ant

To use the tools via Ant you need the hibernate-tools.jar and associated libraries. The libraries are included in the distribution from the Hibernate website and the Eclipse updatesite. The libraries are located in the eclipse plugins directory at /plugins/org.hibernate.eclipse.x.x.x/lib/tools/.These libraries are 100% independent from the eclipse platform. How to use these via ant tasks are described in the Ant chapter.