I am trying to generate an RCP product from a set of Eclipse plugin. When I am trying to run the Eclipse plugin from my Eclipse.rcp.product plugin, Eclipse is asking me to add all the dependent plugins. I have done that.
However, on adding a new plugin, it starts asking for dependencies (e.g., third party libraries from Eclipse's Orbit repo) of that plugin too. All the dependencies of individual plugins are referenced in those plugins.
Why do I have to add all the references again in the RCP plugin. What is the way around or right way?
The xxx.product file must list every plugin that your RCP is going to use as this list determines what is included in the resulting product.
This is a separate list from the individual plugin dependencies.
The Dependencies tab of the .product file editor has an 'Add Required' button which should add everything that is needed (assuming you have already added all your plugins).
You can also use 'features' rather than 'plugins' for the product file which reduces the number of things that need to be included in the dependencies.
Related
I have written few custom checkstyle rules using checkstyle API. They run fine using Maven (after I add the new project as a dependency to the checkstyle plugin).
Now I want these rules to be used by the Eclipse Checkstyle plugin. And this is where I am stuggling.
I've downloaded the sample plugin project (as suggested here and here).
I do not understand what to do next after reading these links.
Do I need to export my project as a JAR?
How do I plug it into my existing Checkstyle plugin?
Thanks
You can do it like following :
Create plugin project and add your custom checks there.
Make appropriate changes to plugin.xml, checkstyle_packages.xml.
Export the project as Deployable Plug-ins and fragments (Export > Plug-in Developement)
Copy the jar file to Eclipse Plugin folde, so no need to install your custom check .
You can refer this tutorial
You already have the correct links that will eventually get you there. As for your questions:
All your custom checks can go into one JAR file. That JAR file must be an Eclipse plugin JAR. I simply install it by copying it to the Eclipse dropins folder, but there may be more elegant ways to do that.
So you end up with two plugins: The original, unmodified Eclipse-CS, and your own plugin which contains the custom checks. When both are independently installed in Eclipse, the Eclipse-CS configuration dialog will offer your custom checks for use in Checkstyle configurations.
I am creating an RCP application. I am planning to provide p2 update functionality.
For example there are 4 plugins: A,B,C,D
Plugin A and B represents the core functionality of my RCP application. I have created a feature with name com.myorg.feature.core. In-side the feature.xml, in the plugin tab I have added plugins A & B.
I am adding feature com.myorg.feature.core as a dependecy in the product file of my RCP applicaton. After that I export the RCP application using product file (here product is a feature based product).
Now I have created two more features.
com.myorg.feature.featureC
com.myorg.feature.featureD
As these are optional functionalities to my RCP application, I want user to chose, whether to install them or not. So user will chose the install new software option where this features will be list.
The problem I am facing is, these plugins C & D are using certain 3rd party libraries e.g. BIRT, NATTABLE. So each time, I build featureC or featureD, put it on the update site and I try to install them in my application, they show the dependency failures, like bundle missing: org.eclipse.birt.core
I go back to the feature.xml for featureC -> plugins tab -> add org.eclipse.birt.core and build feature again. But several times my RCP application failed to install with errors bundles missing.
Is there any mechanism where I can determine all the required bundle from start? Is is the right way to launch updates or new install-able units for my RCP application?
#Priank it is better to add all dependencies in plugins tab in feature.xml, this is only one time effort. You can compute required plugins from dependencies tab of feature.xml
To me, the first question should be if you really want to use the Eclipse PDE export wizards for delivering updates.
Instead, you should set up a headless build for your project. If you are familiar with the PDE (and don't happen to hate Maven ;-), Tycho is probably the right choice for you. (Disclaimer: I'm committer on the Tycho project, and may not know all potential alternatives.)
You can easily make Tycho include all the transitive dependencies in a p2 repository: Just set the option includeAllDependencies to true on the tycho-p2-repository-plugin.
I am currently running Eclipse 3.7 Indigo
My current project is a Plug-in Project
I wanted to try out the product called icePDF in my existing project.
So I downloaded the two required jar files from the binary download.
icepdf-core.jar and icepdf-viewer.jar
So I created a new plug-in project from existing jars. I am added the two jar files and created the plug-in project. I then exported the project and produced a project jar file .
Went back in to my existing project where I want to use the features of icePDF.
Went to dependencies -> Required Plug-ins -> Added my new icePDF plugin.
I am sure that I am missing a key step. Because as soon as I close the icePDF project in Package Explorer. I get a error in my main project.
Error : Missing Required Plug-in
What I don't understand is I have at least 12 other required plug-ins, none of them are open.
Was this the right way to try and add the icePDF jars to my existing project? Was there a way to just incorporate the jars in to the plug-in project without having to create the new project?
EDIT
Looks like icePDF primarily uses Swing. My project is SWT based, I do not want to use Swing in the project. I am looking for something that will view a existing pdf, convert a pdf and print a pdf to local printer.
Any suggestions??
It is normal behavior that Eclipse reports an error when a required plugin is closed, if this plugin is only available through your workspace. I assume that the other required plugins are 'standard' Eclipse plugins, such as EMF; those do not have to be in your workspace, as they are directly installed into your Eclipse platform.
Another way would be to put the original Jars into your plugin project. Just create a folder, e.g. lib/, paste the Jars there, and add them to the plugin project's class path. The latter is a bit tricky, as you have to add them in the Project Properties as well as in the Manifest.ml (in the 'runtime' tab of the plugin.xml-editor, IIRC) and the build.properties file.
Please read about the Eclipse target platform, as you seem not to be aware of that concept.
Generally speaking, there is an Eclipse environment in which you develop your code (which you use), and there is another Eclipse environment, in which your developed plugin runs (i.e. which a user of your plugin uses). That second one is called "target platform" in Eclipse terms. And they can be different, e.g. you develop in Eclipse 4.2, but your plugins shall run in Eclipse 3.7.
If you don't create a target platform yourself, then Eclipse just assumes its current installation to be the target platform (i.e. your development environment). That is why all "normal" plugins can be used as dependencies without them being in the workspace. But your icePdf plugin is not part of the Eclipse installation (and therefore not part of the target platform), which is why it needs to be available in the workspace.
If you define a target platform, you can then simply add those icepdf plugins to it and don't need to have them in the workspace any longer.
What is the right way to include an additional JAR file in an Eclipse plugin? My own plugin requires apache-commons-io. I copied the JAR into my plugins directory and added it via the "Dependencies" tab of the plugin manifest. This works for me, but other users of my plugins will have to download Commons-IO manually.
What is the correct way to package Commons-IO in my plugin?
I usually use the following strategy:
If I can find the JAR in question packaged as a bundle - i.e. the MANIFEST.MF contains the correct entries - then I use this. Have a look at the Orbit project for a set of pre-packaged bundles of all sorts. org.apache.commons.io is already here...
If that is not possible, then I just include the JAR in my bundle, and updates MANIFEST.MF - e.g. Bundle-ClassPath: library.jar,.
Sometimes it is cleaner to create a unique plugin for libraries.
(So you can use it from several plugins, License topics, Size of your Plug-In, different version, ...)
Do so by "New ..."
Category: "Plug-In Development"
then "Plug-In from existing jar archieve"
Select your jars and there you go.
I need to configure my eclipse product to load all features/plugins in features/plugins directory. Now my product loads just plugins that are listed in metadata, so if I export some plugin directly from eclipse tool as "deployable plugins" it's loaded in my product, but if I put a plugin jar directly in plugins directory It doesn't appear (the same if I work with features)
I simply make new product configurations, put the feature that contains my application plugin and then exporting product I have this problem.
My eclipse version is 3.6.1
I think the problem is in the launcher configuration but I don't know what I have to change
In theory, your exported RCP application should simply pick up any new features and plugins you add later. However, make sure you put the extra stuff in the dropins folder of your RCP, since this is the expected location for manually installed features since the introduction of p2.
If for some reason it still doesn't work, try launching Eclipse with the -clean command line argument.
According to The Eclipse runtime options page, the -clean argument has the following effect:
[...] any cached data used by the OSGi framework and eclipse runtime will be wiped clean. This will clean the caches used to store bundle dependency resolution and eclipse extension registry data. Using this option will force eclipse to reinitialize these caches.
In my experience this can resolve many mysterious cases, where newly added plugins are not loaded by Equinox.