I heard that vendors do not all have 64 bt libs, so am wanting to only install 32 bit Eclipse, and 32 bit Java. However, I have run into IDE issues so wondered if it is all because I did not install 64 bit?
issues http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3302797/cannot-connect-subclipse-to-visualsvn-on-windows-7 http://groups.google.com/group/android-beginners/browse_thread/thread/66d6cbe47c9722b1
Probably. If you need help with 64 bit Eclipse, check this out:
http://lingpipe-blog.com/2009/03/05/eclipse-ide-for-64-bit-windows-and-64-bit-java/
Actually I had the opposite experience. I tried installing Java and Eclipse for 64 bit, and had trouble setting up my environment, since some things I needed weren't compatible with 64 bit (yet), and stuff like that. So I switched back to 32 bit (even though the OS is 64 bit). I am currently working in a 32 bit environment, and have been for some time.
I think your best bet is to study what you'll need for your development environment, and see if everything will work in either 64 or 32 bit, and choose the one that best fits your needs.
So to answer your question, no you don't need to install 64 bit versions of Java and Eclipse, and switching to 64 bit may not guarantee that things that don't work now, will work after the switch, and there's always the chance of running into new problems.
What IDE issues? I would suggest you install eclipse 32 and java 32 and avoid all the headache. I've not seen any issues myself, Galileo and Helios are working fine on W7 x64.
32-bit Java and 32-bit Eclipse also work on 64-bit Windows.
Eclipse uses native libraries (for SWT, its own GUI toolkit). That means that you have to match the "bitness" of the Java runtime environment and Eclipse: if you're using 32-bit Java, you need 32-bit Eclipse, and if you're using 64-bit Java, you need 64-bit Eclipse.
I don't know what issues you had, but if you're picking the wrong combination (32-bit Java and 64-bit Eclipse or vice versa), you wouldn't even be able to start Eclipse.