Many features of an IDE like code assist/completion, refactoring, exploration of type hierarchies are common place for languages like Java. For C++ and especially for such a large and complex project as OpenOffice these features where not easily available. Or so I thought. With recent versions of Eclipse and CDT and with proper organization of OpenOffice modules it is possible develop more easily and more productively than with mere command line interfaces.

With addons tailored to the needs of OpenOffice development the whole development cycle of editing, building, deployment, testing (debugging to some extent) can be done from within Eclipse with just a few key presses.

I will describe - how to set up Eclipse to handle the huge codebase of OpenOffice - some of the highlights that Eclipse and CDT bring to editing source code - how to build and deploy code changes