I am following a tutorial. The guy keeps on adding different plug-ins such as subclipse, maven, spring source tool suite, etc after setting up jdk, eclipse, tomcat.
While installing spring, he was saying that spring makes it difficult to debug the programme. That didn't make me happy. He also added, it's up to you if you want to install it.
Since I am not familiar with it, I just want to know if it's alright to not to have spring at all? Is there really any use of having all those plug-ins?
Is Spring Source Tool suite required for J2EE application development?
No.
Not even if you are using Spring in your application.
And there is no requirement to use Spring either ... though it does make a lot of things simpler.
Is there really any use of having all those plug-ins?
Obviously there is some use, otherwise he wouldn't be using them in the first place! But for each of the plugins you have identified, you can get by without using the plugin:
Instead of m2eclipse, you can construct the Eclipse buildpaths by hand, and then run your Maven builds from a command shell. (I would not recommend this ... but it is possible.)
Instead of subclipse, you can do SVN checkins / checkouts by hand from a command shell. You just need to remember to do an F5 refresh afterwards to keep Eclipse in sync with the file system changes.
Instead of the Spring Tool Suite, you can do spring programming, wiring, etc the old-fashioned way ... just like we all did before the plugin was available.
You need to make up your own mind ... like the guy in the tutorial said!
