E4/RCP Future
< E4
Note that E4/Componentization is related to this.
What is the future of RCP?
Here is a (non-complete) list of RCP-related topics that could be addressed with E4. Please feel free to edit/comment theses items and add new topics that might be important for E4. This list could also be an input for the E4 discussion at the upcoming E4 Summit.
- Can we reduce the complexity?
- Right now, after one week of training, a RCP newbie just touched the very basic things of RCP. This is one reason why many big industry companies have problems adopting RCP.
- A less complex application model and a UI presentation model might help here, but clean, simple and concise Java APIs all over the place are also very important.
- Can we reduce the footprint?
- Do bundles like ICU (4.3MB) have to be part of the RCP core?
- Can we refactor the workbench bundle (3.7MB) and take optional things out of the RCP core?
- Can we focus on THE best practice of doing things?
- In the current RCP implementation there's very often more than one way how to achieve the same goal.
- Can we integrate just the best practice into the core and provide an optional compatibility layer?
- Example: ActionSets vs. menu contributions (+commands & handlers)
- Can (and should) we provide a more customizable UI for the desktop?
- The ongoing discussions about a canvas based UI core are very interesting...
- For RCP UI customization currently we have the Presentation API, custom SWT widgets, Equinox transformations etc.. But besides that, current RCP applications look similar to the Eclipse IDE.
- Should we integrate authentication/authorization better in the RCP core?
- In the Equinox area there is some ongoing work to integrate these things
- A standard user/role with UI support concept would be very helpful (see bug 201052)
- Should we integrate provisioning better into the RCP core?
- Currently Equinox p2 is integrated into Eclipse 3.4M6, and I like the p2 approach.
- But as of today, it is not so easy to reuse p2 in a domain specific RCP application
- Some of the provisional p2 UIs could be part of the public API in the RCP update story (would also be good for the 3.3 stream)
- From Architecture Council/Minutes May 15 2008#Build Granularity:
- New flavors of SDK, RCP-with-resources, RCP-with-workbench-but-without-resources