Developing plugins with SWT-Designer ??

[tohagan]

Our project team will be focused on plugins and we would purchase SWT Designer if it spelled out how to make plugins using it.

Given that this forum includes the "plugin book" I'd have expected that SWT-Designer would explain somewhere how to make plugins (rather than just RCP apps) but so far I've not found a mention of plugin support in any of the SWT feature lists or roadmap.

Did I miss something ?

[Eric Clayberg]

Our project team will be focused on plugins and we would purchase SWT Designer if it spelled out how to make plugins using it. Given that this forum includes the "plugin book" I'd have expected that SWT-Designer would explain somewhere how to make plugins (rather than just RCP apps) but so far I've not found a mention of plugin support in any of the SWT feature lists or roadmap. Did I miss something ?

Yes. You seem to have missed the fact that RCP apps and Eclipse plugins are basically the same thing. The point of SWT Designer is not to "make plugins". The point of SWT Designer is to create SWT user interfaces. You can create standalone SWT windows and composites as well as any of the common UI pieces used in Eclipse plugins and RCP apps such as ViewParts, EditorParts, Perspectives, PreferencePages, PropertyPages, WizardPages, Dialogs, Eclipse Forms API pages, etc. The creation of all of these pieces is covered in the SWT Designer docs (available in the SWT Designer web site or in the SWT Designer Help plugin).

If you want to "make plugins", you need to use the Eclipse PDE plugin wizard. If you want more information about creating Eclipse plugins, then I recommend that you either read our book or the Java Developer's Guide to Eclipse. If you want to create the views, editors, perspectives, etc. needed by your plugin, then you need SWT Designer.

[tohagan]

Thanks for the clarification. Obviously I'm rather new to "RCP" which I'd incorrectly mapped to "RCP standalone apps".

Thanks for taking the time to include all those hyperlinks. We'd missed a few of these features.