I am a student who will be using C++ next quarter. I really enjoyed using the Galileo release of Eclipse with Java and I would like to continue using Eclipse for for C++ development. I am now experimenting with C++ development on Eclipse. I am running Eclipse 3.5 SR2 with CDT 6.02. My operating system is Windows 7 and I have installed MinGW-5.1.6. Version 6.3 of GDB is installed. I have it compiling and stepping through code. However, I have the suspicion that I'm just crawling along and have yet to "shift the car out of first gear". I've spent about a week poking around on the Web to learn what constitutes and "optimal" C++ Eclipse experience. In particular, I'm interested in round-tripping with UML and unit testing. My exploration of the Web became an archeological dig. I turned up how-to articles from 2003, alternative MinGW distros, references to plugins, dead-links, more references to plugins, passionate discussions on gdb bugs, and more references to plugins. I no longer have any idea what might constitute an optimal C++ Eclipse environment. Would members of the community like to weigh-in on what they consider to be the current optimal experience for C++ development using Eclipse?