Plug-in Dependency Visualization

Understanding dependencies between plug-ins in Eclipse is a complex task. The current plug-in dependency analysis tools available in Eclipse are restricted to simple tree views with drill-down support. This project aims at adding visualization support to the Eclipse Plug-in Development Environment (PDE) in order to help provide cognitive support to developers as they analyze their plug-in dependencies. This view is being done as part of the Google Summer Of Code.

The Project

The dependency visualization aims to provide a set of views to assist with plug-in dependency analysis tasks. In particular, the views will provide cognitive support to people as they attempt to understand the dependencies between their plug-ins.

For a complete description of the view, please visit the project website.

For a complete list of all the open issues, please see our bug list.

Deliverables

Legend

Needs some investigation

Patch in progress

Bug fixed / Feature added

Bugs

1. Complete the PDE View and add plug-in filters

• Filter by JRE Version (Bug#168729)
• Filter by Enabled / Disabled (Bug#183658)

2. Add dependency path analysis (show why a plug-in is required by highlighting dependency paths). (Bug#183815)

3. Add improved navigation support

• Forward and back button support (Bug#183818)
• Add search support for the list of show plug-ins (Bug#183819)

4. Remove the dependency on GEF (Bug#183820)

5. Add Screenshot support (Bug#199491)

6. Add Show Version Number (Bug#200046)

7. Introduce error reporting This was a number of small bugs that provides "smart error reporting" when errors are found in the dependencies

8. Investigate the use of the Draw2D Directed Graph Layout (Bug#200195)

Accessing the code

Look here for a complete description of how to access the code for the PDE Dependency View