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| <title>Using the Plug-in Development Environment</title> |
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| <h1>Plug-in Development Environment Overview</h1> |
| <p>The Plug-in Development Environment (PDE) is a tool that is designed to |
| assist developers in the creation, development, testing, debugging, and |
| deployment of Eclipse plug-ins. The mandate of PDE also encompasses |
| tooling for the development of fragments, features, and update sites.</p> |
| <p>PDE is part of the Eclipse SDK and not a separately launched |
| tool. In line with the general Eclipse platform philosophy, PDE provides a |
| wide variety of platform contributions (e.g. views, editors, wizards, launchers, |
| etc.) that blend transparently with the rest of the Eclipse workbench, and |
| assist the developer in every stage of plug-in development while working inside |
| the Eclipse workbench.</p> |
| <h2>Concepts</h2> |
| <ul> |
| <li><b>Host vs. runtime</b><br> |
| When you start up the workbench, you will use it to work on your projects |
| that define the plug-ins you are building. The workbench instance that you |
| are running as you develop your plug-in using the PDE and other tools is the |
| <b>host</b> instance. The features available in this instance will come exclusively from |
| the plug-ins that are installed with your application. Once you are happy |
| with your plug-in and want to test it, you can launch another workbench |
| instance, the <b>runtime</b> instance. This instance will contain the same plug-ins as the host instance, |
| but will also have the plug-ins you were working on in the host instance. |
| PDE launcher will take care of merging your plug-ins with the host plug-ins |
| and creating the run-time instance.</li> |
| <li><b>External vs. workspace plug-ins</b><br> |
| When developing Eclipse plug-ins, the set of plug-ins that you will be used |
| to run the runtime workbench come from two distinct places: the workspace of |
| the host instance and the target platform. Although, to PDE, all plug-ins |
| are the same no matter where they come from, there are a few differences |
| that quickly become evident to users:<br> |
| <ul> |
| <li><b>Workspace plug-ins</b> are those plug-ins under development in |
| your host workbench. They are under your control and can be added, |
| deleted and modified by the user. </li> |
| <li><b>External plug-ins</b> are plug-ins that arrived with the basic |
| platform installation and are simply referenced from their original |
| location without modification. You can reference them, browse them, view |
| their source and debug them, but they are read-only. </li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| <p>The Plug-ins view, which is part of the PDE perspective, will show the |
| combined list of workspace and external plug-ins. In it, you will be able to |
| browse the directory structure of external plug-ins, open files, etc.</p> |
| <p> |
| <img border="0" src="../images/ngrelc.png" width="159" height="27" alt="Related concepts"><br> |
| <a href="javaScript:openRelatedLink('guide/pde_setup.htm')">Preparing the workbench</a><br> |
| <a href="javaScript:openRelatedLink('guide/pde_configuring.htm')">PDE concepts</a></p> |
| <p> |
| <img border="0" src="../images/ngrelt.png" width="159" height="27" alt="Related tasks"><br> |
| <a href="javaScript:openRelatedLink('guide/pde_creating.htm')">Creating new plug-in project</a><br> |
| <a href="javaScript:openRelatedLink('guide/pde_manifest.htm')">Editing the manifest</a><br> |
| <a href="javaScript:openRelatedLink('guide/pde_running.htm')">Running</a><br> |
| <a href="javaScript:openRelatedLink('guide/pde_deploy.htm')">Deploying</a><br> |
| <a href="javaScript:openRelatedLink('guide/pde_features.htm')">Working with features</a><br> |
| <a href="javaScript:openRelatedLink('guide/pde_sites.htm')">Working with update sites</a></p> |
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