Eclipse/API Central

This page is a hub to collect information about Eclipse Project APIs.

How to use the Eclipse API Guidelines for using Eclipse APIs to ensure that your code will keep working as Eclipse evolves.
Evolving Java-based APIs Guidelines for how to evolve Java-based APIs while maintaining compatibility with existing client code.
Javadoc How to write Javadoc
Provisional API Guidelines
API Removal Process
Deprecation Policy
Policy on use of Export-Package
OSGi API Guidelines
API Javadoc tags
Version Numbering Guidelines on how to assign and evolve plug-in version numbers
Development Conventions and Guidelines, including
- Naming_Conventions
SPI description
Metadata File Naming Recommendations

API Design and Evolution - EclipseCon 2010 presentation - full downloadable material as ZIP (3.5MB)
Effective API Design: 1 hr video by Joshua Bloch
Who took the cookie from the cookie jar? - EclipseCon 2010 presentation on API Tooling by Olivier Thomann
PDE UI Incubator ApiTools Compare
Eclipse APIs and Java 5 EclipseCon 2007 presentation
Eclipse APIs: Line in the Sand (pdf) The philosophy, psychology, and sociology of APIs, EclipseCON 2004 presentation by Jim des Rivieres
API First (pdf) Best practices for API development based, EclipseCON 2005 presentation by Jim des Rivieres
API Tutorial 2006 at EclipseCon
Eclipse Development Process and Quality APIs
Article on compatibility by Joseph Darcy from the Sun/Oracle JDK team