The Eclipse C++ Development Environment is a Java based Integrated Development Environment (IDE). On Debian, it is a 'non-free' install. As such, the file /etc/apt/sources.list needs to have the word 'non-free' tacked on to the end of the deb and deb-src lines.
The command 'apt-get update' then needs to be run to update its lists.
The Java runtime environment can then be downloaded with 'apt-get install sun-java-jre'.
The downloaded Eclipse C++ Development Environment can be expanded. Within the expanded directory is a executable file called 'eclipse'. Start it and the environment is up and running. Dead easy.