How to add java 8 to eclipse

Question

I've an old machine running Windows XP 32.

Because Oracle dropped support for WXP 32 bits, I've manually installed the jdk following the awesome answer here:

installing JDK8 on Windows XP - advapi32.dll error

I've however not added it yet to the JAVA_PATH, which is set to jdk 6. I don't know if it would harm or not to add it as well, but I want to be conservative here because a lot of programs in this machine need jdk 6. I don't want to break anything working now.

I'd like to toy around in eclipse to test the new Java 8 features. I've manually added the new jre 8 in the "Installed JREs" section under window -> preferences. In the compiler combo, the highest level available is 1.7 (installed jdk7 some time ago, this time using the official installer, but I still keep java 6 as the default in the system). I don't see any option to add the new level.

Consequently, when creating a new project using the new JRE, a warning is shown saying:

The current workspace uses a 1.4 JRE with compiler compliance level 1.6. This is not recommended and either the JRE or the compiler compliance level should be changed.

Seems a problem derived from the manual installation of the JDK.

I'm using Eclipse Kepler v4.3.1, but I have also tested this in older 3.x install with identical results.

Any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

Support for Java 8 in Eclipse Kepler 4.3.2 is described here. This basically says specify

http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/4.3-P-builds/

as the 'Work with' site on Install New Software and select 'Eclipse Java 8 Support'.

Recent builds of Eclipse 4.4 Luna (since 18 March 2014) have Java 8 support included (but Luna is still under development).

Update: Eclipse Luna (4.4) was released on 25 June 2014