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PDE/User Guide
Contents
Getting Started
PDE Overview
The Plug-in Development Environment (PDE) provides tools to create, develop, test, debug, build and deploy Eclipse plug-ins, fragments, features, update sites and RCP products.
PDE also provides comprehensive OSGi tooling, which makes it an ideal environment for component programming, not just Eclipse plug-in development.
PDE is broken into three main components:
- #ui UI - A rich set of models, tools and editors to develop plug-ins and OSGi bundles
- #api API Tooling - Tooling to assist API documentation and maintenence
- #build Build - Ant based tools and scripts to automate build processes
Discover the latest features in the What's New section.
PDE UI
PDE UI provides a editors, wizards, launchers, views and other tools to create a full featured environment to develop and deploy Eclipse plug-ins, fragments, features, update sites, RCP products and OSGi bundles.
Some of the PDE tools include:
- Form-Based Manifest Editors: Multi-page editors that centrally manage all manifest files of a plug-in or feature.
- RCP Tools: Wizards and a form-based editor that allow you to define, brand, test and export products to multiple platforms.
- 'New Project Creation Wizards: Create a new plug-in, fragment, feature, feature patch and update sites.
- Import Wizards: Import plug-ins and features from the file system.
- Export Wizards: Wizards that build, package and export plug-ins, fragments and products with a single click.
- Launchers: Test and debug Eclipse applications and OSGi bundles.
- Views: PDE provides views that help plug-in developers inspect different aspects of their development environment.
- Miscellaneous Tools: Wizards to externalize and clean up manifest files.
- Conversion Tools: Wizard to convert a plain Java project or plain JARs into a plug-in project.
- Integration with JDT: Plug-in manifest files participate in Java search and refactoring.
To get started, try out the following cheat sheets:
- [javascript:executeCommand("org.eclipse.ui.cheatsheets.openCheatSheet(cheatSheetId=org.eclipse.pde.helloworld)") Open plug-in cheat sheetCreating an Eclipse Plug-in]
- [javascript:executeCommand("org.eclipse.ui.cheatsheets.openCheatSheet(cheatSheetId=org.eclipse.pde.rcpapp)") Open RCP cheat sheetCreating a Rich Client Application]
PDE API Tooling
PDE API Tooling assists in the documentation and maintenance of APIs provided by plug-ins and OSGi bundles.
Some of the features include:
- Compatibility Analysis : Identify binary compatibility issues relative to a previous version of a plug-in.
- API Restriction Tags : Javadoc tags are provided to explicitly define restrictions associated with types and members.
- Version Number Validation: Identify invalid plug-in version numbers relative to a previous version of a plug-in.
- Javadoc
@since
Tag Validation: Identify missing and invalid@since
tags on types and members. - API Leak Analysis : Identify API types and methods that leak non-API types.
- Quick Fixes : Quick fixes are provided to adjust plug-in versions and @since tags appropriately.
To get started, see the tasks:
- [../../tasks/api_tooling_setup.htm Setting up API Tooling]
- [../../tasks/api_tooling_baseline.htm Setting up a baseline]
- [../../tasks/api_tooling_options.htm Changing options]
- [../../tasks/api_tooling_create_filters.htm Creating filters]
- [../../tasks/api_tooling_remove_filters.htm Removing filters]
PDE Build
PDE Build facilitates the automation of plug-in build processes. PDE Build produces Ant scripts based on development-time information provided by, for example, the plugin.xml and build.properties files. The generated Ant scripts, can fetch the relevant projects from a CVS repository, build jars, Javadoc, source zips, put everything together in a format ready to ship and send it out to a remote location (e.g., a local network or a downloads server).
To get started, see the following:
- [../../tasks/pde_product_build.htm Automated building of RCP applications from product configurations]
- [../../tasks/pde_feature_build.htm Automated building of features]
- [../../tasks/pde_plugins_build.htm Automated building of plug-ins]
- [../../tasks/pde_feature_generating_ant.htm Generating Ant scripts from PDE]
- [../../tasks/pde_feature_generating_antcommandline.htm Generating Ant scripts from scripts]
- [../../tasks/pde_p2_builds.htm Building p2 repositories and products.]
- [../../reference/pde_builder_config.htm Builder Configuration Properties]
- [../../reference/pde_feature_generating_build.htm Feature and Plug-in build properties]