Add the ability to write plugins using jruby or groovy.

This project is part of Google Summer of Code 2007, project link is here.

Student: Anton Arhipov

Blog: http://arhipov.blogspot.com

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SVN repo at SF.net: at eclipse-incub

About

Scripting language like Groovy (or JRuby) is an ideal choice for Java developer to do quick prototyping. The biggest benefit of Eclipse support for Groovy plug-in development is that while changing the plug-in on-the-fly there's no need to start a separate Eclipse instance or restart the IDE when something was changed in the code. This would rapidly improve the speed of lightweight plug-in development.

This project aims to add ability to write plugins in JVM-based scripting language, like Groovy and JRuby. But it could be a starting point for any other JVM scripting language, like BeanShell or Jython.

Legend

 Needs some investigation
 Patch in progress
 Bug fixed / Feature added

Repository

SVN repo at SF.net at eclipse-incub contains two plug-ins:

• yummy-plugin - this is the plug-in that should provide the ability to write the new plug-ins in a scripting language, e.g. Groovy.
• yummy-script-contributor - a demonstration plug-in that contributes the components written in a scripting language.

I will also provide a set of unit tests as a separate plug-in and feature/site projects for the installation.

Status/Timeline

Implementation of runtime engine to run the scripts. javax.scripting API is in use for this purpose: org.eclipse.soc.yummy.core.ScriptExecutor does the job.

How to attach an action, that is implemented using a scripting language (Groovy or JRuby), to an eclipse button or menu. All the extensions will be described just if it would be a normal eclipse plug-in, instead, the implementing class will be specified using using custom syntax line referring to a script location.

The dependencies for any specific language PDE implementation are:

• <language>.jar, e.g. groovy-all.jar
• <language>-engine.jar, e.g. groovy-engine.jar
• yummy-plugin.jar, i.e. the plug-in for any specific language will use the engine to run the scripts executed by <language>-engine.jar at the end. The brand new scripted plug-in will have to use yummy to enable scripting support.

Licencing issues for 3rd-party libraries.

Executing the new script plug-in in the same workbench.

Options:

• Plug-In Architecture Notes. When starting the "scriptable" plug-in, the extensions defined in plugin.xml should be processed by a custom handler, that will override the standardized extension processing.
• Create a a bundle programmaticaly and register it via Equinox.

Deliverables

The main results to be reached:

- An Eclipse extension/plug-in to (re)load (Groovy/JRuby) scripts on the fly.

- Command line console support to modify and change the program behavior interactively. This could look like in case Apache Derby ij plug-in