The basic requirement for development with Fuse ESB Enterprise is the Java Development Kit (JDK) from Oracle. Generally, the recommended version is J2SE 1.6—for more platform-specific details, see the Platforms Supported page.

The recommended build system for developing Fuse ESB Enterprise applications is Apache Maven version 3.0.x. See Installation Guide for more details.

Maven is more than a build system, however. Just as importantly, Maven also provides an infrastructure for distributing application components (typically JAR files; formally called artifacts). When you build an application, Maven automatically searches repositories on the Internet to find the JAR dependencies needed by your application, and then downloads the needed dependencies. See Maven Essentials for more details.

Fuse IDE is an eclipse-based development tool for developing Fuse ESB Enterprise applications and is available either as a standalone binary or as an eclipse plug-in. Using Fuse IDE, you can quickly create new Fuse projects with the built-in project wizard and then edit Apache Camel routes with the drag-and-drop graphical UI. You can download Fuse IDE from the download page.

You can use other tools to develop Fuse ESB Enterprise projects, but it is recommended that you use a development tool that is compatible with Maven projects (a good example is Intellij IDEA, which recognises Maven projects as a native project format).