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Eclipse Plug-in Development Beginner's Guide - Second Edition

By : Alex Blewitt

4 (2)

Eclipse Plug-in Development Beginner's Guide

4 (2)

By: Alex Blewitt

Overview of this book

Eclipse is used by everyone from indie devs to NASA engineers. Its popularity is underpinned by its impressive plug-in ecosystem, which allows it to be extended to meet the needs of whoever is using it. This book shows you how to take full advantage of the Eclipse IDE by building your own useful plug-ins from start to finish. Taking you through the complete process of plug-in development, from packaging to automated testing and deployment, this book is a direct route to quicker, cleaner Java development. It may be for beginners, but we're confident that you'll develop new skills quickly. Pretty soon you'll feel like an expert, in complete control of your IDE. Don't let Eclipse define you - extend it with the plug-ins you need today for smarter, happier, and more effective development.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Sections

Time for action – heading

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. Creating Your First Plug-in

1. Creating Your First Plug-in

Getting started

Time for action – setting up the Eclipse environment

Time for action – creating a plug-in

Time for action – launching Eclipse from within Eclipse

Debugging a plug-in

Time for action – debugging a plug-in

Time for action – updating code in the debugger

Time for action – setting up step filtering

Time for action – breaking at method entry and exit

Time for action – setting a conditional breakpoint

Time for action – catching exceptions

Time for action – inspecting and watching variables

Summary

2. Creating Views with SWT

2. Creating Views with SWT

Creating views and widgets

Time for action – creating a view

Time for action – drawing a custom view

Time for action – drawing a seconds hand

Time for action – animating the second hand

Time for action – running on the UI thread

Time for action – creating a reusable widget

Time for action – using layouts

Managing resources

Time for action – getting colorful

Time for action – finding the leak

Time for action – plugging the leak

Interacting with the user

Time for action – getting in focus

Time for action – responding to input

Using other SWT widgets

Time for action – adding items to the tray

Time for action – responding to the user

Time for action – modal and other effects

Time for action – groups and tab folders

Summary

3. Creating JFace Viewers

3. Creating JFace Viewers

Why JFace?

Creating TreeViewers

Time for action – creating a tree viewer

Time for action – using Images in JFace

Time for action – styling label providers

Sorting and filtering

Time for action – sorting items in a viewer

Time for action – filtering items in a viewer

Interaction

Time for action – adding a double-click listener

Tabular data

Time for action – viewing time zones in tables

Selection

Time for action – propagating selection

Time for action – responding to selection changes

Summary

4. Interacting with the User

4. Interacting with the User

Creating menus, commands, and handlers

Time for action – installing the E4 tools

Time for action – creating commands and handlers

Time for action – binding commands to keys

Time for action – changing contexts

Time for action – enabling and disabling menus items

Time for action – contributing commands to pop-up menus

Jobs and progress

Time for action – running operations in the background

Time for action – reporting progress

Time for action – dealing with cancellation

Time for action – using subtasks and sub-progress monitors

Time for action – using null progress monitors and sub monitors

Time for action – setting job properties

Reporting errors

Time for action – showing errors

Summary

5. Working with Preferences

5. Working with Preferences

Eclipse Preferences

Time for action – persisting a value

Time for action – injecting preferences

Time for action – injecting individual preferences

Time for action – responding to preference changes

Preference pages

Time for action – creating a preference page

Time for action – creating warning and error messages

Time for action: choosing from a list

Time for action – aligning field editors with a grid

Time for action – placing the preferences page

Time for action: using other field editors

Time for action – searching for preferences

Summary

6. Working with Resources

6. Working with Resources

Using the workspace and resources

Time for action – creating an editor

Time for action – writing the markup parser

Time for action – building the builder

Time for action – iterating through resources

Time for action – creating resources

Time for action – implementing incremental builds

Time for action: handling deletion

Using natures

Time for action – creating a nature

Using markers

Time for action – error markers if file is empty

Time for action – registering a marker type

Summary

7. Creating Eclipse 4 Applications

7. Creating Eclipse 4 Applications

Time for action – installing E4 tooling

Time for action – creating an E4 application

Time for action – creating a part

Using services and contexts

Time for action – adding logging

Time for action – getting the window

Time for action – obtaining the selection

Time for action – dealing with events

Time for action – calculating values on demand

Time for action – interacting with the UI

Using commands, handlers, and menu items

Time for action – wiring a menu to a command with a handler

Time for action: passing command parameters

Time for action – creating a direct menu and keybindings

Time for action – creating a pop-up menu and a view menu

Creating custom injectable classes

Time for action – creating a simple service

Time for action – injecting subtypes

Summary

8. Migrating to Eclipse 4.x

8. Migrating to Eclipse 4.x

Why Eclipse 4.x?

Time for action – creating a migration component

Time for action – updating to e4view

Time for action – upgrading the actions

Time for action – creating toolbars

Time for action – adding the view menu

Time for action – adding the pop-up

Migrating to Eclipse 4.x patterns

Time for action – creating a model fragment

Time for action – migrating the commands and handlers

Time for action – creating the view menu

Time for action – defining the pop-up view in the fragment

Summary

9. Styling Eclipse 4 Applications

9. Styling Eclipse 4 Applications

Styling Eclipse with CSS

Time for action – styling the UI with CSS

Time for action – using custom CSS classes

Using the Eclipse spies

Time for action – using the CSS Spy

Time for action – integrating the spy into a product

Styling a custom widget

Time for action – adding the clock

Time for action – using a CSS property

Time for action – going to the dark side

Time for action – adding themes

Time for action – switching between themes

Summary

10. Creating Features, Update Sites, Applications, and Products

10. Creating Features, Update Sites, Applications, and Products

Grouping plug-ins with features

Time for action – creating a feature

Time for action – exporting a feature

Time for action – installing a feature

Time for action – categorizing the update site

Time for action – depending on other features

Time for action – branding features

Building applications and products

Time for action – creating a headless application

Time for action – creating a product

Target platforms

Time for action – creating a target definition

Time for action – switching to a specific version

Summary

11. Automated Testing of Plug-ins

11. Automated Testing of Plug-ins

Using JUnit for automated testing

Time for action – adding dependencies to the target platform

Time for action – writing a simple JUnit 4 test case

Time for action – writing a plug-in test

Using SWTBot for user interface testing

Time for action – writing an SWTBot test

Time for action – working with menus

Working with SWTBot

Time for action – hiding the welcome screen

Time for action – avoiding SWTBot runtime errors

Working with views

Time for action: showing views

Time for action – interrogating views

Interacting with the UI

Time for action – getting values from the UI

Time for action – waiting for a condition

Summary

12. Automated Builds with Tycho

12. Automated Builds with Tycho

Using Maven to build Eclipse plug-ins with Tycho

Time for action – installing Maven

Time for action – building with Tycho

Building features and update sites with Tycho

Time for action – creating a parent project

Time for action – building a feature

Time for action – building an update site

Time for action – building a product

Time for action – using the target platform

Testing and releasing

Time for action – running automated tests

Time for action – changing the version numbers

Signing update sites

Time for action – creating a self-signed certificate

Time for action – signing the plug-ins

Time for action – serving an update site

Summary

13. Contributing to Eclipse

13. Contributing to Eclipse

Open source contributions

Time for action – installing the sources

Time for action – debugging the platform

Time for action – modifying the platform

Time for action – checking out from EGit and Git

Time for action – configuring the SWT project

Contributing to Eclipse

Time for action – creating an account at Eclipse

Time for action – creating a bug

Time for action – setting up a Gerrit profile

Time for action – committing and pushing a patch

Summary

A. Using OSGi Services to Dynamically Wire Applications

A. Using OSGi Services to Dynamically Wire Applications

Services overview

Registering a service programmatically

Registering a service declaratively

Dynamic services

Dynamic service configuration

Summary

B. Pop Quiz Answers

Chapter 1 – Creating Your First Plug-in

Chapter 2 – Creating Views with SWT

Chapter 3 – Creating JFace Viewers

Chapter 4 – Interacting with the User

Chapter 5 – Storing Preferences and Settings

Chapter 6 – Working with Resources

Chapter 7 – Creating Eclipse 4 Applications

Chapter 8 – Migrating to Eclipse 4.x

Chapter 9 – Styling Eclipse 4 Applications

Chapter 10 – Creating Features, Update Sites, Applications, and Products

Chapter 11 – Automated Testing of Plug-ins

Chapter 12 – Automated Builds with Tycho

Index

Index

Summary

Eclipse 3.x applications will continue to work in the foreseeable future but the API is frozen and will not receive any updates. Being able to incrementally update an application by migrating views allows developers to take advantage of injection and UI management through fragments.

It's possible to migrate code by directly replacing the user interface building blocks with explicit calls to code services, as shown in the first half of this chapter. However, this will result in a large amount of code being written, which may be counter-productive. Instead, a more Eclipse 4.x-based approach is to create a model fragment file and define the parts, commands, handlers, toolbars, view menus, and pop-up menus in the fragment.

The next chapter will look at styling Eclipse 4.x applications.

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