Is there a way to have Eclipse flash its taskbar icon once a time consuming task finishes? - eclipse

Question

I often minimize Eclipse to read or work on something else for a few minutes while I wait for it to do something (e.g., run a large JUnit test suite, synchronize a huge number of files with a repo, run a long Ant build, etc.). I have to check back every 30 seconds or so to see if it's finished yet. I would like Eclipse to alert me, preferably by blinking its taskbar icon, after it finishes a time consuming operation. Are there any settings or plugins that can make this happen?

Answer 1

I believe is you have Mylyn installed, this should be enabled by default for Windows 7. See here and here. Regarding the post-build actions, I do not know of any existing Eclipse plugins that do this. However, I have not exhaustively searched the marketplace. However, this could be accomplished with existing Eclipse APIs but it would require someone to author a new Eclipse plugin.
The Eclipse Platform jobs framework has an API called IJobManager. A developer could write a new Eclipse plugin that could use this API to listen for job changes and do the following:
Create an eclipse plugin, register a listener to IJobManager on startup.
Once any interesting job is completed, it could fire off some external task/script using normal java process execution API in the JDK
This all could be accomplished in one Java file, probably less than 500 lines long.
You could use this template to setup a basic Eclipse plugin project including build system and have it built and ready to install into your existing Eclipse.
Update I just found a maven archetype for building eclipse plugins with tycho here. It would be my recommendation for someone new to building an eclipse feature/updatesite.

Answer 2

You can create a new plugin project and create this kind of functionality for yourself. The
IJobchangeListener from the Eclipse Jobs API is probably very interesting for you.
The IJobChangeListener is an interface where you can receive notifications for the different type of job states.
I have created a class called JobListener which adds the IJobchangeListener to the JobManager. With the action SampleAction you can register or unregister the listener. that means, if the listener is registered and your application is minimized you will be notified with a MessageDialog (no blinking taskbar).
I found a link where someone made his swing application blink. This functionality should be included in the method public void done(final IJobChangeEvent event). I haven't done this in my test class.
You can also get additional information about the Job with
event.getJob();
Here you are able to check the Job name:
String jobName = event.getJob().getName();
The name of the Job is human readable, for example "Collecting garbage", "Update for Decoration Completion", "Building workspace", etc.
The JobListener class.
/**
* A job listener which may be added to a job manager
*/
public class JobListener {
private MyJobListener listener = null;
private IWorkbenchWindow window = null;
private boolean active = false;
public JobListener(IWorkbenchWindow window) {
this.window = window;
}
/**
* register the job listener
*/
public void register() {
listener = new MyJobListener(window);
IJobManager jobMan = Job.getJobManager();
jobMan.addJobChangeListener(listener);
active = true;
}
/**
* unregister the job listener
*/
public void unregister() {
IJobManager jobMan = Job.getJobManager();
jobMan.removeJobChangeListener(listener);
active = false;
}
public boolean isActive() {
return active;
}
class MyJobListener implements IJobChangeListener {
private IWorkbenchWindow window;
public MyJobListener(IWorkbenchWindow window) {
this.window = window;
}
#Override
public void sleeping(IJobChangeEvent event) {
}
#Override
public void scheduled(IJobChangeEvent event) {
}
#Override
public void running(IJobChangeEvent event) {
}
#Override
public void done(final IJobChangeEvent event) {
window.getShell().getDisplay().asyncExec(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
if(window.getShell().getMinimized()) {
MessageDialog.openInformation(
window.getShell(),
"Test",
"Job " + event.getJob().getName() + " done.");
}
}
});
}
#Override
public void awake(IJobChangeEvent event) {
}
#Override
public void aboutToRun(IJobChangeEvent event) {
System.out.println("About to run: " + event.getJob().getName());
}
}
}
I called this class from a class called SampleAction.java
public class SampleAction implements IWorkbenchWindowActionDelegate {
private IWorkbenchWindow window;
private JobListener listener;
/**
* The constructor.
*/
public SampleAction() {
}
public void run(IAction action) {
if(listener.isActive()) {
listener.unregister();
MessageDialog.openInformation(
window.getShell(),
"Lrt",
"Unregistered");
}
else {
listener.register();
MessageDialog.openInformation(
window.getShell(),
"Lrt",
"Registered");
}
}
public void selectionChanged(IAction action, ISelection selection) {
}
public void dispose() {
}
public void init(IWorkbenchWindow window) {
this.window = window;
this.listener = new JobListener(window);
}
You can get started with eclipse plugin development by creating a new plugin project:
File > New > Project > Plugin Project
I used the Hello World plugin project template to test the code above.