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E4/Self Hosting
We now have Eclipse 4.0 stream builds that we are capable of self-hosting on. That is, using these builds as an IDE to develop e4 and Eclipse 4.0 itself.
Contents
Developing the compatibility layer
At the time of writing, you need three bundles from /cvsroot/eclipse.
-
e4/org.eclipse.e4.compatibility/bundles/org.eclipse.e4.ui.workbench(HEAD) -
e4/org.eclipse.e4.compatibility/bundles/org.eclipse.ui.workbench(HEAD) -
org.eclipse.platform(R4_HEAD branch) -
org.eclipse.sdk(R4_HEAD branch)
To start your "inner" Eclipse, simply bring up the context menu on an item in the package explorer > Run As > Eclipse Application.
If it does not run, make sure you are running the org.eclipse.sdk.ide product and that your launch configuration has the above three bundles checked.
Issues
This section is for gathering a list of known user-level problems that are an impediment to self-hosting. Note this is not a complete list of work to be done, but represents issues that impede a developer's ability to use Eclipse 4.0 as an IDE. Put another way, these are issues that hurt our productivity as we use Eclipse 4.0 to develop itself.
Feel free to add to this list, remove things that are fixed, or increase the priority of bugs that are affecting you. Please don't lower priorities set by others.
Workspace recovery
If in the event that the SDK gets into a state that it will no longer start on your workspace but starts on a new one, you may want to try resetting the state of your workbench by deleting the deltas.xml file.
-
workspace/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.e4.workbench/deltas.xml
P1 - blockers that prevent self hosting
None!
P2 - major impediments
- Keybindings don't work in dialogs bug 308593
- Outline view stops tracking active editor bug 309213
- Workaround: Ctrl+O
- No contributed menus (Run/Debug menu)
- Workaround: keybindings such as F11, Alt+Shift+D,E
- Unable to change key bindings in the Keys preference page
- Unable to maximize/minimize parts bug 309249
P3 - minor impediments
- Editors not shared across perspectives
- No perspective switcher
- Workaround: use Ctrl+F8, Window > Open Perspective...
- Closing editors is very slow bug 309161
- Launch buttons missing in toolbar(wimj)
- Workaround: Bring up the context menu on some resource and then Run As > Run Configurations...
- Customize perspective does not work (wimj)
- Icons missing and weird toolbar (wimj)
- Progress bar stays filled in the status line (wimj)
- Context menu "New > Other" is disabled
