View source for FAQ What APIs exist for integrating repository clients into Eclipse?

''

Repositories, or version and configuration management (VCM) tools, are an
essential part of software development.  A wide variety of code
repositories and a larger number of client-side tools for interacting
with those repositories are available.  These clients range from rudimentary command line
tools to rich graphical clients that are deeply integrated with other development
tools.  As a tool-integration platform, repository client integration is an important
aspect of Eclipse.  From the very start, the core architecture of the Eclipse Platform
has striven to allow deep integration of these repository client tools.


Early on, Eclipse used the term <i>VCM</i> as a label for its repository integration
components. Because acronyms in general aren&#146;t particularly descriptive and because
this particular acronym didn&#146;t seem to be widely understood, the Eclipse Platform adopted
the term ''team tools'' as a replacement. This is why the repository APIs
are found in the plug-ins <tt>org.eclipse.team.core</tt> and <tt>org.eclipse.team.ui</tt>
and why the developers writing this stuff call themselves the ''team'' team. 


As with many Eclipse components, team tooling is divided into a generic, repository-agnostic
layer and then separate layers for specific repository clients.  The platform includes a reference
implementation of the generic team APIs, which implements a powerful graphical
client for integrating with <i>concurrent versions system</i>, or CVS.
The team API centers on the notion of a <i>repository provider</i>.  Each project in an
Eclipse workspace can be associated with a single <tt>RepositoryProvider</tt> subclass that
acts as the entry point for repository interaction. The <tt>RepositoryProvider</tt> API and the
remainder of the team-integration APIs are extremely well documented, so we don&#146;t need to go 
into more detail here.

The <i>Platform Plug-in Developer Guide</i> includes  detailed documentation on how to
implement your own repository provider. See the section '''Programmer&#146;s guide &gt;
Team support'''.


== See Also: ==

[[FAQ_What_support_does_the_workspace_have_for_team_tools%3F]]

<hr><font size=-2>This FAQ was originally published in [http://www.eclipsefaq.org Official Eclipse 3.0 FAQs]. Copyright 2004, Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. This text is made available here under the terms of the [http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html Eclipse Public License v1.0].</font>