- Authors:
- Eric Clayberg,
- Dan Rubel
"I'm often asked, 'What are the best books about Eclipse?' Number one on my list, every time, is Eclipse: Building Commercial-Quality Plug-ins. I find it to be the clearest and most relevant book about Eclipse for the real-world software developer. Other Eclipse books focus on the internal Eclipse architecture or on repeating the Eclipse documentation, whereas this book is laser focused on the issues and concepts that matter when you're trying to build a product." -- Bjorn Freeman-Benson Director, Open Source Process, Eclipse Foundation"As the title suggests, this massive tome is intended as a guide to best practices for writing Eclipse plug-ins. I think in that respect it succeeds handily. Before you even think about distributing a plug-in you've written, read this book." -- Ernest Friedman-Hill Sheriff, JavaRanch.com"Eclipse: Building Commercial-Quality Plug-ins was an invaluable training aid for all of our team members. In fact, training our team without the use of this book as a base would have been virtually impossible. It is now required reading for all our developers and helped us deliver a brand-new, very complex product on time and on budget thanks to the great job this book does of explaining the process of building plug-ins for Eclipse." -- Bruce Gruenbaum"If you're looking for just one Eclipse plug-in development book that will be your guide, this is the one. While there are other books available on Eclipse, few dive as deep as Eclipse: Building Commercial-Quality Plug-ins." -- Simon ArcherEclipse has established itself as a dominant force in the application-development space. Key to the success of Eclipse is the ability of developers to extend its functionality using plug-ins.This new edition of Eclipse: Building Commercial-Quality Plug-ins is the definitive, start-to-finish guide to building commercial-quality Eclipse plug-ins, with an emphasis on adding the sophistication and polish that paying customers demand. The book provides both a quick introduction to using Eclipse for new users and a reference for experienced Eclipse users wishing to expand their knowledge and improve the quality of their Eclipse-based products.Revised to take advantage of pure Eclipse 3.1 and 3.2 APIs, this widely praised bestseller presents detailed, practical coverage of every aspect of plug-in development and specific solutions for the challenges developers are most likely to encounter. All code examples, relevant API listings, diagrams, and screen captures have been updated.Some Eclipse concepts--such as actions, views, and editors--have not changed radically, but now have additional functionality and capabilities. Other areas, such as the Eclipse plug-in infrastructure, have changed drastically due to the Eclipse shift towards an OSGi-based infrastructure. This edition is fully updated to address these new advances for Eclipse developers. Includes a quick introduction to Eclipse for experienced Java programmers Serves as a systematic reference for experienced Eclipse users Introduces all the tools you need to build Eclipse and Rational plug-ins Explains the Eclipse architecture and the structure of plug-ins and extension points Offers practical guidance on building Eclipse user interfaces with SWT and JFace Shows how to use change tracking, perspectives, builders, markers, natures, and more Covers internationalization, help systems, features, and brandingThis book is designed for anyone who wants a deep understanding of Eclipse, and every experienced developer interested in extending Eclipse or the Rational Software Development Platform.
Cited By
- Ober I, Palyart M, Bruel J and Lugato D (2018). On the use of models for high-performance scientific computing applications, Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM), 17:1, (319-342), Online publication date: 1-Feb-2018.
- Ajit S, Holmes C, Johnson J, Kolovos D and Paige R (2017). Model-based tool support for Tactical Data Links, Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM), 16:2, (559-586), Online publication date: 1-May-2017.
- Winkler U, Fritzsche M, Gilani W and Marshall A BOB the builder Proceedings of the 8th European conference on Modelling Foundations and Applications, (416-427)
Choudhary S, Duvall J, Jin W, Zhao D and Orso A Platform support for developing testing and analysis plug-ins Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Developing Tools as Plug-ins, (16-19)- Li H, Thompson S, Orosz G and Tóth M Refactoring with wrangler, updated Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGPLAN workshop on ERLANG, (61-72)
- Ribeiro M and Borba P Recommending refactorings when restructuring variabilities in software product lines Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Refactoring Tools, (1-4)
- Kurniawan D and Abramson D An IDE framework for grid application development Proceedings of the 2008 9th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Grid Computing, (184-191)
- Dames M and Biletskiy Y An extensible text extraction tool for learning objects Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Electronic commerce: The new e-commerce: innovations for conquering current barriers, obstacles and limitations to conducting successful business on the internet, (116-124)
Index Terms
- Eclipse: Building Commercial-Quality Plug-ins (2nd Edition) (Eclipse)
Recommendations
Reviews
Elliot Jaffe
In the open source world, most applications are written for fun. They range from rough sketches to full-blown products. Eclipse is one of the more product-oriented projects. What makes Eclipse interesting is the care and thought that have been invested into making it a solid platform, on which others can build production-level packages. The drawback to this approach is that building packages and extensions for Eclipse is complicated. First, developers need to learn about the framework and interface points built into Eclipse. Then, those developers need to be aware of the many facets of software integration that differentiate the amateur offering from a full-blown production quality system. This second edition should be required reading for anyone thinking of building an Eclipse plug-in. The authors assume that their audience is made up of serious Java programmers. They provide a very quick walk-through of Eclipse and its components, and then do a deep-dive into the details of integrating a custom extension into the Eclipse framework. The level of detail is sufficient for a good developer to grasp the essential elements of each section. The details are provided in such a way that they can be skimmed on the first reading, and reviewed when the actual product development begins. I found this book enlightening in its description of the framework on which Eclipse is based. The Eclipse architects did an amazing job of providing many of the hooks necessary to allow generic extension of the base platform to many forms of software engineering and development. The authors of this book have found a way to capture those thoughts through a sample extension that they weave into Eclipse. You should read this book if you have any intention of writing Eclipse plug-ins. This book should be your guide to each step of development. The other reason to read this book is to enjoy the clarity of architecture and design that has been invested in Eclipse. Toward that end, I would hope that the next version has a few more architectural diagrams. The terms used in Eclipse, such as "action," "view," and "perspective," are initially somewhat vague, and only become clear after some amount of review and inspection. A good diagram somewhere early in the book would have made these terms much clearer. Online Computing Reviews Service
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