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| <title>Creating a PDE plug-in</title> | |
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| <h1>Creating a plug-in</h1> | |
| <p>Once your working environment is clean and configured, you can start creating | |
| your first plug-in. </p> | |
| <p>You start by creating a special plug-in project. PDE provides a wizard for | |
| setting up the project. You can access this wizard using <b>File>New>Project...</b> | |
| and | |
| selecting <b>Plug-in Project</b> in the list of wizards under 'Plug-in | |
| Development' category.</p> | |
| <p>When you press <b>Next</b>, the first entry you will need to set is the project | |
| name. It is a convention that plug-in project names are the same as plug-in IDs, | |
| but they can be different. As an example, we will choose <b>"com.example.xyz"</b> | |
| for the project name.</p> | |
| <p>The next page shows the initial structure of the plug-in project. If | |
| the project name conforms to the rules for plug-in names, you can keep the | |
| default. Otherwise, you will be asked to change it (See <a href="../../org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/firstplugin_minimal.htm#firstplugin_minimal_pluginid">plug-in | |
| ids</a> for a description of the format.). The <b>Plug-in | |
| runtime library </b> name will be used to | |
| define where the code of your new plug-in will be packaged once you are ready to | |
| publish it. The <b>Source folder</b> will be created to store your Java source inside the | |
| new project.</p> | |
| <p>If you are creating a plug-in that is not meant to contain Java code, e.g. a | |
| documentation plug-in, select the 'Create a simple project' option and press <b>Finish</b>. PDE will create a simple project containing a plug-in.xml file | |
| with minimal content.</p> | |
| <p align="center"> | |
| <img border="0" src="images/project-structure.gif" alt="Plug-in Project Structure" width="500" height="500"></p> | |
| <p>In the next page, you will need to choose what the content of your new plug-in | |
| is going to look like. If you choose a blank plug-in, only the plug-in project | |
| will be created. If you use the template wizards, the PDE will also create | |
| files such as the plug-in class, build properties, and plug-in | |
| manifest. Some of the templates provided by PDE also generate useful content | |
| such as views, editors, property pages etc. This content is generated by | |
| templates that can be combined into a wizard. All the available templates are | |
| individually selectable in the "Custom plug-in wizard". </p> | |
| <p>In this example, we use the "Hello, World" template wizard. You can | |
| read about the wizard in the area to the right of the wizard list.</p> | |
| <p align="center"> | |
| <img border="0" src="images/project-codegen.gif" alt="Plug-in code generators" width="500" height="500"></p> | |
| <p align="left">After the wizard has been selected, the following pages are | |
| under wizard's control. Each template wizard contributes a number of pages that | |
| customize the content about to be generated. However, all the templates share one | |
| common page. It will collect information about the plug-in, such as its name, | |
| version, and provider. It also provides options related to the plug-in | |
| class that will be generated. In this example, we will accept all the | |
| options.</p> | |
| <p align="center"> | |
| <img border="0" src="images/default-codegen.gif" alt="Mandatory plug-in content page" width="500" height="500"></p> | |
| <p align="left"> </p> | |
| <p align="left">After this page, templates add their own to collect | |
| template-specific information. Our "Hello, World" template has only | |
| one related to the action that will be contributed, as well as the message that | |
| will be shown in a message box.</p> | |
| <p align="center"> | |
| <img border="0" src="images/hello-world-page.gif" alt=""Sample Action Set" template page" width="500" height="500"></p> | |
| <p align="left"> </p> | |
| <p align="left">When you press <b>Finish</b>, the wizard will create the new | |
| project, all the specified folders and files, and the initial Java build path. | |
| The build path is important for correct compilation of Java classes that are | |
| generated. The wizard will also open the plug-in manifest editor so that you can | |
| define additional attributes of your plug-in. </p> | |
| <p align="left"> After the wizard is | |
| finished, the initial project structure should look like this:</p> | |
| <p align="center"> | |
| <img border="0" src="images/initial-structure.gif" alt="Initial plug-in project structure" width="224" height="454"></p> | |
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