Updated 2026: The Eclipse package situation on Ubuntu has improved considerably since 2016. Current Ubuntu LTS releases ship reasonably up-to-date Eclipse versions via snap (sudo snap install eclipse --classic), which is now the recommended way to get a current Eclipse on Ubuntu. The Debian packaging approach below remains valid as a learning exercise.

Eclipse has been my editor of choice for Java, Python, Ruby, and XML for many years. The one persistent frustration was that the Eclipse package in Ubuntu’s repositories was always significantly out of date, which meant either living with an old version or doing the download-unpack-symlink dance manually.

I decided to fix this by learning Debian packaging and contributing a .deb for Eclipse 4.5.1 (Mars).

Learning Debian packaging Link to heading

The best starting point is the official guide:

Eclipse turned out to be a reasonably simple package to start with: it’s a self-contained archive with no complex build system, which kept the packaging rules straightforward. The package uses wget at install time to fetch the upstream Eclipse release, then unpacks it and creates the appropriate symlinks.

Note: The Debian repository I originally published is no longer available (removed as obsolete). The learning experience of going through the packaging process was the real value here; the Debian Packaging Guide walks through everything needed to build and publish your own packages.

Building the package Link to heading

The general process for building a Debian package from source:

git clone <repository-url>
cd eclipse-ide-java/eclipse-ide-java_4.5.1
debuild -i -us -uc -b
cd ..

This produces a .deb file in the parent directory, ready to install with:

dpkg -i eclipse-ide-java_4.5.1_amd64.deb

The -us -uc flags skip GPG signing, which is fine for local builds. For publishing to a PPA or the Debian archive, you’d need a proper signing key.