Anonymous
Posted January 19, 2005
The first edition of this book was excellent for plug-in developers and helpful, although not vital, to all others. Two things make this new edition even better than the first edition. First, plug-in development in Eclipse is now so easy and so well explained in this book that there is no reason why anyone shouldn't be doing it. Have you ever worked with an IDE and thought, 'why isn't this function available in the pop-up menu' or 'why doesn't it have this feature'? Developing a plug-in will allow you to customize the functionality of Eclipse to provide the missing feature and this book will clearly explain exactly how to do that. Second, the section of the book that deals with developing with Eclipse has been improved with detailed chapters on team development including using CVS as well as an excellent example of integrating with Tomcat to develop an E-Commerce application. <p> The book is divided into two sections. The first 200 pages deal with using Eclipse and cover everything from the basics to complex team development issues. The next 600 pages cover everything you need to know about extending the functionality of Eclipse. The book ends with 200 pages of exercises that give detailed, step-by-step examples. Five exercises deal with using Eclipse while the rest show examples of extending Eclipse. It is a big book that covers a lot of material but it covers it clearly and with plenty of examples. If you buy one Eclipse book, this should be it.
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Posted December 15, 2004
The Java Developer's Guide to Eclipse (JDG2E), 2nd edition, is the long-awaited update for the first edition, which was quite popular. This is the first book to truly cover Eclipse 3.0 extensively in both the usage of the IDE (how to use Eclipse) and in developing plug-ins (how to extend Eclipse). This book is still my 'bible' in developing Eclipse plug-ins. Many developer resources as complete as this one are most useful only if you read them from cover to cover. But I rarely have time to read a book from cover to cover at one (or adjacent) setting(s). I like a book to use more in pieces, to look up what I want to do and find a snippet of code, or an idea, to get me on my way. This book is great in that respect - countless parts of my own plug-ins have started from a code snippet found in one of the chapters. The examples are simple enough to follow, in chunks that don't require you to have read the whole book, but interesting enough to show you some of the really useful intricacies of Eclipse. The authors are experienced in training Java developers in Eclipse plug-in development, and their experience shows in their practical explanations, example code, and in the exercises included on the CD in the back of the book. There is much supplemental information there in additional to the provided exercises.
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More About This Textbook
Overview
Eclipse is a world-class Java integrated development environment (IDE) and an open source project and community. Written by members of the IBM Eclipse Jumpstart team, The Java™ Developer’s Guide to Eclipse, Second Edition, is the definitive Eclipse companion. As in the best-selling first edition, the authors draw on their considerable experience teaching Eclipse and mentoring developers to provide guidance on how to customize Eclipse for increased productivity and efficiency.
In this greatly expanded edition, readers will find
Using this book, those new to Eclipse will become proficient with it, while advanced developers will learn how to extend Eclipse and build their own Eclipse-based tools. The accompanying CD-ROM contains Eclipse 3.0, as well as exercise solutions and many code examples.
Whether you want to use Eclipse and Eclipse-based offerings as your integrated development environment or customize Eclipse further, this must-have book will quickly bring you up to speed.
Editorial Reviews
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewEclipse, already remarkable, has become even more so. Version 3.0’s new rich-client framework makes it a powerful platform for building and constructing applications, not just tools. Eclipse now supports Sun’s Swing components along with its own SWT. The user interface is now more intuitive, more scalable. With these and 10,000 other changes, the “insider” authors of 2003’s Java Developer's Guide to Eclipse have thoroughly revamped their book. It, too, is now even more remarkable.
Like the first edition, this is a comprehensive guide to getting started with Eclipse: first, by using it as a Java IDE, and then, by extending it to solve new problems. But virtually every chapter and example has been updated (and there’s now a complete electronic help book for the exercises, which you can install alongside Eclipse’s own help). There are no less than seven new chapters. The book’s already strong exercises have been extended and deepened.
That aforementioned rich-client support is covered in depth, with two detailed exercises -- including one that shows off Eclipse’s new runtime support for dynamic plug-ins. The coverage of extending Eclipse has been, well, extended -- with a new introduction, more coverage of views, and a whole new chapter on JFace viewers. You’ll learn new ways to build more responsive user interfaces (and leverage Swing interoperability); tune Eclipse plug-in performance; even broaden your markets via internationalization.
These IBM authors have been teaching Eclipse since before it was Eclipse (this book grows out of their experiences rolling out Eclipse’s predecessor technology). Bring your Java expertise, and they’ll take you the rest of the way. Bill Camarda, from the December 2004 Read Only
Product Details
Related Subjects
Meet the Author
Jim D’Anjou is a senior software engineer and a certified IT Specialist located at the IBM Silicon Valley Lab in San Jose, California. He has a degree in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley. Jim has more than twenty-five years of industry experience at IBM and elsewhere. He has held a variety of technical and management positions developing products for relational databases, database tools, application repositories, and application development tools. He holds two U.S. patents for work in software process automation. In March 2001, he joined the Eclipse Jumpstart team and serves as an instructor and industry consultant.
Scott Fairbrother is an advisory software engineer at IBM in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Scott is a software developer with more than twenty years of experience. He has developed object-oriented application frameworks for business process management. He has written specifications for IBM middleware on Windows 2000 and has also written about Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. Most recently, Scott has worked on the Eclipse Jumpstart team, helping IBM and partners create commercial offerings based on Eclipse. He received a B.S. in marine biology from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
Dan Kehn is a senior software engineer at IBM in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. His interest in object-oriented programming goes back to 1985, long before it enjoyed the acceptance it has today. He has a broad range of software experience, having worked on development tools like VisualAge for Smalltalk, operating system performance and memory analysis, and user interface design. Dan worked as a consultant for object-oriented development projects throughout the United States, as well as for four years in Europe. His recent interests include object-oriented analysis/design, application development tools, and Web programming with the WebSphere Application Server. He is currently concentrating on performance analysis and tuning of IBM Eclipse-based projects.
John Kellerman joined IBM in 1984 with a computer science degree from Purdue University. He has since completed graduate degrees in computer engineering at North Carolina State and business administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has spent the majority of his twenty years at IBM in the development and management of application development tool products, including ISPF/PDF, VisualAge Smalltalk, VisualAge Generator, and Eclipse. John was a founding member of the Eclipse Project, which got under way in late 1999. He is currently IBM Product Manager of Eclipse. His responsibilities include working closely on behalf of IBM with eclipse.org, the Eclipse Foundation, and the member companies to help grow the Eclipse community of contributors and commercial offerings.
Pat McCarthy, a senior software engineer at IBM, is a specialist in the use and management of development technologies on a variety of runtime platforms. Pat’s IBM career has included hands-on development of business application systems in Poughkeepsie, New York, and 12 years of project management for the development of IBM Redbooks and education offerings in San Jose, California. He has spent the last several years in Raleigh, North Carolina, focused on supporting the use of Eclipse technology in IBM application development products. Pat has a B.S. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, an M.S. from Marist College. He is the coauthor of more than twenty IBM Redbooks.
Read an Excerpt
Origin of the Book
Starting in late 1999, the authors formed the core of a group within IBM called the Eclipse Jumpstart team. The team was created to share knowledge of what would become Eclipse technology throughout IBM and with its business partners—that is, to “jumpstart” the IBM and IBM partner development community on Eclipse. Part of this effort included the creation of a set of presentations, lecture materials, and accompanying exercises. Over the ensuing months, as the Eclipse technology matured, the presentations and exercises matured as well. As the Eclipse community grew to include various companies and academic institutions, requests for this information also grew. After every class we taught, we revised and improved the materials. When our schedules could not keep pace with the demand, we adapted the materials and made them available for use in a self-study mode. This was the genesis of this book. You can think of each chapter in the book as a classroom lesson. The exercises and examples reinforce the concepts of the chapters and provide you with practice using or extending aspects of Eclipse.The Second Edition
Late 2003 found most of the original authors still actively engaged in Eclipse. We have been unexpectedly and very pleasantly surprised with the public acceptance of the first edition. The public and private commentary on the first edition was very positive. In July 2004 the first edition received an Editors’ Choice Award from the Java Developers Journal. The authors express their sincerest thanks and appreciation to our many readers. With the first edition barely six months old, we realized that Eclipse 3.0 wouldbe very special and has the potential to take Eclipse to new heights. It will reach a much larger developer community and potentially millions of users now that Eclipse is not limited to integrated development environments (IDEs) but can host any kind of client application. The authors remain passionate about this technology and the opportunities it offers for innovative tools and applications. We decided to create a second edition earlier than planned. Our objectives for the second edition were to upgrade the book to Eclipse 3.0, improve it based on reader feedback, and add a select number of new topics. This edition is nearing the limit in sheer weight and volume that anyone should have to carry. We hope it continues to serve you and the Eclipse community well.What’s New in the Second Edition
Final screenshots in this book were created just as Eclipse 3.0 was about to ship. There may be minor discrepancies between the images in this book and the final version of Eclipse. Goals
We have several goals in bringing this book to you.
Although the term “Eclipse” conveys the image of a solar event causing darkness, the intent of this book is to shed light, add clarity, and focus on a powerful new platform. Whether you are new to Eclipse or one of the early adopters, we welcome you to the Eclipse community.Intended Audience and Prerequisites
The audience for this book includes Java programmers who plan to use Eclipse as their development environment, those who will use Eclipse-based offerings, advanced users who want to customize Eclipse further, tool providers who seek to develop tools that will integrate with Eclipse, and application developers who want to use Eclipse as the framework for their client applications. Prior experience with Eclipse is not necessary; however, this book assumes that you are familiar with the Java programming language. While it describes how to use the Java Development Tools provided by Eclipse, it does not teach the syntax and semantics of the Java programming language. How the Book Is Organized
This comprehensive book can help you learn to use and extend Eclipse. After you have mastered the basics, you will likely use this book as a reference. To help you learn Eclipse, you should start with the Guide to Reading This Book section. It breaks down this formidable text into manageable chunks that you can read in a sequence better suited for learning.
The book is divided into six parts. Part I, Using Eclipse, applies to those using Eclipse as their development environment. The book begins by covering the basic navigation and terminology of Eclipse. You will learn about the Java development environment, including secrets to becoming a power user. Using Eclipse in a team programming environment is explained. You will learn how to use the flexibility of Eclipse to maximize your productivity and fit your own personal style. Students who are studying the Java programming language may find using Eclipse, instead of simply a command line environment, a much more productive and exciting way to learn the richness and power of the language. Instructors may discover how using Eclipse in the classroom will accelerate the student’s mastery of the language and be a productive tool to use in research.
Part II, Fundamentals of Extending Eclipse, focuses on the important elements of extending Eclipse independent of whether you are extending Eclipse to develop tools or creating a client application. It covers the architecture of Eclipse, how to develop plug-ins, the creation of client applications using the rich client support, how to make your plug-ins extensible to others, and packaging and deployment.
Part III, Extending the Eclipse Workbench, covers the most commonly required topics to extend Eclipse functionality. Using the Eclipse architecture as a base, Part III covers the frameworks needed to extend the Eclipse user interface. It covers basic graphical user interface (GUI) development using the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT), dialogs and wizards, menus, viewers, views, editors, perspectives, and online documentation.
Part IV, Extending the Eclipse IDE, focuses on those services that apply when extending Eclipse as an IDE. This is in contrast to Part II, which covers services that apply to both IDE-based and non-IDE-based applications. Part IV includes topics like accessing the workspace and extending the Java Development Tools.
Part V, Extensibility Special Topics, rounds out your knowledge of Eclipse by covering a variety of topics that you may not need right away or that are specialized to specific situations. Chapters covering serviceability, Swing interoperability, concurrency, capabilities, performance tuning, OLE and ActiveX support (Windows), and internationalization are among the topics in Part V.
Learning in a programming environment without actually writing code is difficult. Part VI, Exercises, contains a series of detailed exercises to reinforce the concepts presented in the book. Part VI depends on the files included on the CD-ROM. The CD-ROM contains solutions to all of the exercises and contains many code samples augmenting the material in the chapters. The exercises do not depend on one another, so you can perform them in any order.
Many chapters contain a reference to the book Official Eclipse 3.0 FAQs by John Arthorne and Chris Laffra (Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2004). We recommend it as a complementary addition to this book. Specific frequently asked questions (FAQs) that augment the chapter content are cited in the chapter references and on the CD-ROM. See also http://eclipsefaq.org.
Table of Contents
Preface
Origin of the Book
Starting in late 1999, the authors formed the core of a group within IBM called the Eclipse Jumpstart team. The team was created to share knowledge of what would become Eclipse technology throughout IBM and with its business partners—that is, to “jumpstart” the IBM and IBM partner development community on Eclipse. Part of this effort included the creation of a set of presentations, lecture materials, and accompanying exercises. Over the ensuing months, as the Eclipse technology matured, the presentations and exercises matured as well. As the Eclipse community grew to include various companies and academic institutions, requests for this information also grew. After every class we taught, we revised and improved the materials. When our schedules could not keep pace with the demand, we adapted the materials and made them available for use in a self-study mode. This was the genesis of this book. You can think of each chapter in the book as a classroom lesson. The exercises and examples reinforce the concepts of the chapters and provide you with practice using or extending aspects of Eclipse.
The Second Edition
Late 2003 found most of the original authors still actively engaged in Eclipse. We have been unexpectedly and very pleasantly surprised with the public acceptance of the first edition. The public and private commentary on the first edition was very positive. In July 2004 the first edition received an Editors’ Choice Award from the Java Developers Journal. The authors express their sincerest thanks and appreciation to our many readers. With the first edition barely six months old, we realized that Eclipse 3.0 would be very special and has the potential to take Eclipse to new heights. It will reach a much larger developer community and potentially millions of users now that Eclipse is not limited to integrated development environments (IDEs) but can host any kind of client application. The authors remain passionate about this technology and the opportunities it offers for innovative tools and applications. We decided to create a second edition earlier than planned. Our objectives for the second edition were to upgrade the book to Eclipse 3.0, improve it based on reader feedback, and add a select number of new topics. This edition is nearing the limit in sheer weight and volume that anyone should have to carry. We hope it continues to serve you and the Eclipse community well.
What’s New in the Second Edition
Final screenshots in this book were created just as Eclipse 3.0 was about to ship. There may be minor discrepancies between the images in this book and the final version of Eclipse.
Goals
We have several goals in bringing this book to you.
Although the term “Eclipse” conveys the image of a solar event causing darkness, the intent of this book is to shed light, add clarity, and focus on a powerful new platform. Whether you are new to Eclipse or one of the early adopters, we welcome you to the Eclipse community.
Intended Audience and Prerequisites
The audience for this book includes Java programmers who plan to use Eclipse as their development environment, those who will use Eclipse-based offerings, advanced users who want to customize Eclipse further, tool providers who seek to develop tools that will integrate with Eclipse, and application developers who want to use Eclipse as the framework for their client applications. Prior experience with Eclipse is not necessary; however, this book assumes that you are familiar with the Java programming language. While it describes how to use the Java Development Tools provided by Eclipse, it does not teach the syntax and semantics of the Java programming language.
How the Book Is Organized
This comprehensive book can help you learn to use and extend Eclipse. After you have mastered the basics, you will likely use this book as a reference. To help you learn Eclipse, you should start with the Guide to Reading This Book section. It breaks down this formidable text into manageable chunks that you can read in a sequence better suited for learning.
The book is divided into six parts. Part I, Using Eclipse, applies to those using Eclipse as their development environment. The book begins by covering the basic navigation and terminology of Eclipse. You will learn about the Java development environment, including secrets to becoming a power user. Using Eclipse in a team programming environment is explained. You will learn how to use the flexibility of Eclipse to maximize your productivity and fit your own personal style. Students who are studying the Java programming language may find using Eclipse, instead of simply a command line environment, a much more productive and exciting way to learn the richness and power of the language. Instructors may discover how using Eclipse in the classroom will accelerate the student’s mastery of the language and be a productive tool to use in research.
Part II, Fundamentals of Extending Eclipse, focuses on the important elements of extending Eclipse independent of whether you are extending Eclipse to develop tools or creating a client application. It covers the architecture of Eclipse, how to develop plug-ins, the creation of client applications using the rich client support, how to make your plug-ins extensible to others, and packaging and deployment.
Part III, Extending the Eclipse Workbench, covers the most commonly required topics to extend Eclipse functionality. Using the Eclipse architecture as a base, Part III covers the frameworks needed to extend the Eclipse user interface. It covers basic graphical user interface (GUI) development using the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT), dialogs and wizards, menus, viewers, views, editors, perspectives, and online documentation.
Part IV, Extending the Eclipse IDE, focuses on those services that apply when extending Eclipse as an IDE. This is in contrast to Part II, which covers services that apply to both IDE-based and non-IDE-based applications. Part IV includes topics like accessing the workspace and extending the Java Development Tools.
Part V, Extensibility Special Topics, rounds out your knowledge of Eclipse by covering a variety of topics that you may not need right away or that are specialized to specific situations. Chapters covering serviceability, Swing interoperability, concurrency, capabilities, performance tuning, OLE and ActiveX support (Windows), and internationalization are among the topics in Part V.
Learning in a programming environment without actually writing code is difficult. Part VI, Exercises, contains a series of detailed exercises to reinforce the concepts presented in the book. Part VI depends on the files included on the CD-ROM. The CD-ROM contains solutions to all of the exercises and contains many code samples augmenting the material in the chapters. The exercises do not depend on one another, so you can perform them in any order.
Many chapters contain a reference to the book Official Eclipse 3.0 FAQs by John Arthorne and Chris Laffra (Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2004). We recommend it as a complementary addition to this book. Specific frequently asked questions (FAQs) that augment the chapter content are cited in the chapter references and on the CD-ROM. See also http://eclipsefaq.org.