Libraries for making Eclipse plugin development easier? - eclipse

Question

I'm just learning Eclipse plugin development, currently for the purpose of adding a few simple custom commands that nobody else has bothered to implement. I've noticed that the Eclipse plugin API... leaves a lot to be desired. Are there any open source libraries which attempt to improve the plug-in development experience? (I've started to idly speculate about writing my own...).
I know Eclipse 4.0 is supposed to fix some of these issues long-term, but I'm unlikely to be able to move to it at work any time soon.
Edit
Here's an example of what I mean. This is an implementation of "hungry delete" functionality for emacs:
(defmacro hungry-delete-backward (&optional limit)
(if limit
`(let ((limit (or ,limit (point-min))))
(while (progn
;; skip-syntax-* doesn't count \n as whitespace..
(skip-chars-backward " \t\n\r\f\v" limit)
(and (eolp)
(eq (char-before) ?\\)
(> (point) limit)))
(backward-char)))
'(while (progn
(skip-chars-backward " \t\n\r\f\v")
(and (eolp)
(eq (char-before) ?\\)))
(backward-char))))
And here is part of an equivalent implementation for Eclipse, not including the manifest file, plugin.xml, or the Activator for the plugin:
#Override
public Object execute(ExecutionEvent event) throws ExecutionException {
IEditorPart editor = HandlerUtil.getActiveEditorChecked(event);
if (!(editor instanceof ITextEditor)) return null;
ITextEditor ite = (ITextEditor) editor;
IDocumentProvider idp = ite.getDocumentProvider();
IDocument doc = idp.getDocument(ite.getEditorInput());
ISelection selection = ite.getSelectionProvider().getSelection();
if (!(editor instanceof ITextSelection)) return null;
ITextSelection its = (ITextSelection) selection;
int currentCursorPosition = its.getOffset();
int deletionStart, deletionEnd;
if (its.getLength() == 0) {
deletionStart = currentCursorPosition - 1;
deletionEnd = currentCursorPosition;
FindReplaceDocumentAdapter frda = new FindReplaceDocumentAdapter(doc);
while (Character.isWhitespace(frda.charAt(deletionStart)) && deletionStart > 0) {
deletionStart--;
}
if (deletionStart != 0 && deletionStart + 1 != deletionEnd) deletionStart++;
} else {
deletionStart = its.getOffset();
deletionEnd = its.getOffset() + its.getLength();
}
int deletionLength = deletionEnd - deletionStart;
try {
doc.replace(deletionStart, deletionLength, "");
} catch (BadLocationException ble) {
// Bad location, just ignore it.
}
return null;
}
The chunk of boilerplate at the top of the Java version, for example, could be easily replaced by a library.

Answer 1

I think you're looking for something like Groovy-Monkey or Eclipse-Monkey, which allow you to do scripting to plug into Eclipse. I don't know much about either project, nor do I know if they are actively maintained (actually I know that Eclipse-Monkey is no longer maintained). But, these allow you to do emacs-like scripting inside of Eclipse.