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| <td ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP COLSPAN="2" BGCOLOR="#0080C0"><b><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#FFFFFF">Dynamic |
| Plug-in Details</font></font></b></td> |
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| <p><b>Dynamic Plug-ins</b></p> |
| <p>This work is being done in conjunction with the <a href="http://www.eclipse.org/equinox">Equinox</a> |
| project.</p> |
| <p><i>Plug-in Deactivation </i> - (bug <a href="https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=36956">36956</a>) |
| In Eclipse plug-ins are activated once referenced and they remain in that |
| state for the duration of the user's Eclipse session. In an effort to |
| reduce memory footprint (amung other reasons) we are investigating allowing |
| plug-ins to become deactivated when they are not being used, and thus |
| that amount of memory could be reclaimed for use by the system.</p> |
| <p><i>Incremental Registry Resolution</i> - When a user installs new plug-ins |
| in Eclipse, they are currently forced to restart their system in order |
| for their changes to take effect. This is because currently the plug-in |
| registry is parsed when the system starts up and from that point forward |
| it remains static. We would like to change the plug-in registry resolution |
| to be dynamic, that is to allow the user to add new plug-ins to the system |
| and remove plug-ins from the system at any given point in time and have |
| the system react and behave appropriately.</p> |
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| <p><b>Progress updates</b></p> |
| <p>October 7, 2003 - New API for dynamically installing plug-ins is available. |
| API changes: |
| <ul> |
| <li>new package org.eclipse.core.runtime.registry - this package provides an extension |
| registry, a simplified view of the plug-in registry. The extension registry (available |
| through the org.eclipse.core.runtime.Platform class) provides a way for |
| plug-ins to be notified when extensions are added to or removed from extension points. |
| </li> |
| <li>new methods in org.eclipse.core.runtime.Platform - the added methods allow clients to |
| install plug-ins dynamically and to listen to plug-in lifecycle events, such as |
| plug-in addition and activation. |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| <b>N.B.</b> <i>-dynamic, a new command-line option was defined to put the platform in the |
| "dynamic mode". Currently, this option is required so the APIs described above can be used. This option |
| is temporary and will not be supported in future builds. |
| </i> |
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