| <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"><HTML> |
| <HEAD> |
| |
| <meta name="copyright" content="Copyright (c) IBM Corporation and others 2000, 2005. This page is made available under license. For full details see the LEGAL in the documentation book that contains this page." > |
| |
| <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> |
| <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Style-Type" CONTENT="text/css"> |
| |
| <LINK REL="STYLESHEET" HREF="../book.css" CHARSET="ISO-8859-1" TYPE="text/css"> |
| <script language="JavaScript" src="PLUGINS_ROOT/org.eclipse.help/livehelp.js"></script> |
| <TITLE> |
| Creating the plug-in project |
| </TITLE> |
| |
| |
| </HEAD> |
| <BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff"> |
| <H2> |
| Creating the plug-in project</H2> |
| |
| <P >You can use any Java IDE you wish to build Eclipse plug-ins, but of course the |
| Eclipse SDK provides tooling specific for plug-in development. We'll walk |
| through the steps for building our plug-in with the Eclipse SDK, since this is the |
| typical case. If you are not already familiar with the Eclipse workbench and the Java IDE, |
| consult the Java Development User Guide or PDE Guide for further explanations of the steps |
| we are taking. For now we are focusing on the code, not the tool; |
| however, there are some IDE logistics for getting started.</P> |
| <h3>Creating your plug-in project</h3> |
| <p>You will need to create a project that contains your work. We'll take advantage of some of the |
| code-generation facilities of the Plug-in Development Environment (PDE) to give us a template to |
| start from. This will set up the project for writing Java code and generate the default plug-in |
| manifest files (explained in a moment) and a class to hold our view. |
| </p> |
| <ol> |
| <li>Open the <b>New Project...</b> wizard |
| |
| (<a class="command-link" href='javascript:executeCommand("org.eclipse.ui.newWizard")'><img src="PLUGINS_ROOT/org.eclipse.help/command_link.png"> |
| <b>File > New > Project...</b></a>) |
| |
| and choose <b>Plug-in Project </b>from the <b>Plug-in Development</b> category |
| and click <strong>Next</strong>.</li> |
| <li>On the <strong>Plug-in Project </strong> page, use <b>com.example.helloworld</b> |
| as the name for your project and check the box for <strong>Create a Java project</strong> |
| (this should be the default). Leave the other settings on the page with their default |
| settings and then click <strong>Next</strong> to accept the default plug-in project structure.</li> |
| <li>On the <strong>Plug-in Content</strong> page, look at the default settings. The wizard sets <strong>com.example.helloworld</strong> |
| as the id of the plug-in. The wizard will also generate a plug-in class for your plug-in and allow you to supply additional information about |
| contributing to the UI. These defaults are acceptable, so click <strong>Next</strong>. </li> |
| <li>On the <strong>Templates</strong> page, check the box for <strong>Create a plug-in using one of the templates</strong>. Then |
| select the <strong>Plug-in with a view</strong> template. Click <strong>Next</strong>. </li> |
| <li>We want to create a minimal plug-in, so at this point we need to change the default settings to keep things as |
| simple as possible. On the <strong>Main View Settings</strong> page, change the suggested defaults as follows: |
| <img border="0" src="images/firstpluginpde.png" alt="Plug-in view settings" > |
| <ul> |
| <li>Change the <strong>Java Package Name</strong> from <strong>com.example.helloworld.views</strong> to <strong>com.example.helloworld</strong> |
| (we don't need a separate package for our view).</li> |
| <li>Change the <strong>View Class Name</strong> to <strong>HelloWorldView</strong>.</li> |
| <li>Change the <strong>View Name</strong> to <strong>Hello View</strong>.</li> |
| <li>Leave the default <strong>View Category Id</strong> as <strong>com.example.helloworld</strong>.</li> |
| <li>Change the <strong>View Category Name</strong> to <strong>Hello Category</strong>.</li> |
| <li>Leave the default viewer type as <strong>Table viewer</strong> (we will change this in the code to make it even simpler).</li> |
| <li>Uncheck the box for <strong>Add the view to the resource perspective</strong>.</li> |
| <li>Click <strong>Next</strong> to proceed to the next page.</li> |
| </ul></li> |
| <li>On the <strong>View Features</strong> page, uncheck all of the boxes so that no extra |
| features are generated for the plug-in. Click <strong>Finish</strong> to create the project and the plug-in skeleton. </li> |
| <li>When asked if you would like to switch to the Plug-in Development perspective, |
| answer <strong>Yes</strong>.</li> |
| <li>Navigate to your new project and examine its contents.</li> |
| </ol> |
| <p>The skeleton project structure includes several folders, files, and a Java package. The important files at this stage are the |
| <strong>plugin.xml</strong> and <strong>MANIFEST.MF</strong> (manifest) files and the Java source code for your plug-in. |
| We'll start by looking at the implementation for a view and then |
| examine the manifest files.</p> |
| |
| |
| </BODY> |
| </HTML> |
