Customer Reviews

The Java Developer's Guide to Eclipse, 2nd Edition

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

The authors of this book are part of a core IBM group formed to share knowledge of the Eclipse universal IDE. The first part of this book deals with using Eclipse from a Java developers point of view. I found this was not any more helpful than the documentation available on the Eclipse web site. Eclipse works extensively with plug-ins that can be integrated into the Eclipse environment to provide new functionality. I would have liked to see something on some of the more popular plug-ins such as those used to run application servers. Even a list of where to go to get plug-ins would have been helpful. Unfortunately, this part of the book only covers the basics of what comes with Eclipse and does not discuss any existing plug-ins.

The second part of the book, about 450 pages, covers writing your own plug-ins. This part of the book is excellent. It covers not just the basics, but virtually everything you need to know to write your own plug-ins. Whether you wish to code a new toolbar, editor, specialized view, or wizard, it is all covered in this section. With this book you will be writing plug-ins in a fraction of the time you would have otherwise spent. The book also contains exercises which allow you to test your new knowledge.

If your only goal is to use Eclipse then you don't need this book. If your desire is to write plug-ins then I wouldn't even try without it.

The Java Developer's Guide to Eclipse (JDG2E), 2nd edition,
is an updated version of the original popular
and very useful bible for Eclipse developers.
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), it remains my "bible" in
developing Eclipse plug-ins. Many developer resources as extensive
as this one suffer from the "can't open it anywhere" syndrome.
I rarely have time to read a book from cover to cover at one (or adjacent)
setting. I like a book to use more as a reference, 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.
I have so far only browsed the information on the CD but there
is much supplemental information there in additional to the provided
exercises.

The reason this book gets both great and lousy reviews is that Eclipse is such a huge subject. The writing of Eclipse plug-ins is simply a larger subject than any reasonable book can cover. If the topics that the authors chose to cover happen to align with the ones you personally need, then the book is excellent, but if they don't align, the book isn't going to help you much. Part I (six chapters) covers using Eclipse to write programs. Part II (seven chapters) covers the fundamentals of Extending Eclipse with plug-ins. Part III (9 chapters) covers plug-ins in more depth. Part IV (5 chapters) covers extending Eclipse with new tools for the IDE. Part V (6 chapters) covers assorted extra topics, such as OLE and Active X integration and performance tuning. Part VI is a set of nine farily detailed exercises (with source code on the provided CD).

This book is not an overview, the authors opted instead to cover certain topics in pretty good depth. This aproach is good for those already aware of the basic concepts, but will be confusing for noobies (which I was when I first got it). I suggest that those new to Eclipse plug-in development start with a good overview (such as _Eclipse 3 for Java Developers_ by Daum) before switching over to this book for more detailed descriptions.

This book doesn't cover the Eclipse Modeling Framework or the Eclipse Graphical Editing Framework, probably because each of these is a book in itself. This book is also light on its coverage of SWT and JFace, which you will need to be familiar with to develop your own plug-ins (again, a book-length subject in its own right). You will also want to be thoroughly familiar with Java Design Patterns and best practices, since Eclipse uses practically every design pattern you've ever heard of.

While there have been changes to Eclipse since the Second Edtion came out, I was able to figure it out and map between the examples in the book and Eclipse 3.2.1 without too much trouble.

Like many others I wanted to extend Eclipse so I can be more productive. Unfortunately I found this book to be poorly written and the technical details vague. I know what I want to do, but the book (over 1000 pages) does not show me how?!

It explains the Eclipse architecture and idea goals which is fine but is repeated over and over again in various chapters of the book. I also could not get a handle on how it can be applied. This is not a practical guide to Eclipse. It is more about Eclipse's internal design which for most people is a waste of time. The online documents are more useful.

Note the book is also out of date. I tried to follow some of their sparse examples, but I quickly realized it's a waste of time because I have the latest Eclipse 3.11 installed and the examples were for Eclipse 3.0 and the menu options and API have changed. All in all, this book was a real let down.

I bought the book several weeks ago and have read the book cover to cover and tried all of the excercises. I just wanted to let everyone know how good this book is. Seriously, I've purchased and read nearly a hundred technical books in the past several years and this one stands out as one of the best I've ever read.

Anybody who uses eclipse will get something out of this book, although as the title indicates it is primarily geared towards eclipse plugin developers. The first section is dedicated to eclipse users and illuminates many of the useful features that are built into eclipse. The second section of the book is where the real meat is at. This section covers everything you need to know to implement plugins. I was extremely impressed with just how much this book really covers. If you want your hand held for every step, this is not your book. It only presents code snippets, not fully coded examples for each concept. I think this is great, however, because the examples that are included (via the cd) do show full examples of the concepts without wasting valuable page real estate printing every last piece of code. Free of this baggage the book is able to cover considerable ground. If you want an idea of what this book is like go to eclipse.org and look at the articles. The book is like every article included on the website in much more detail, and covers many areas for which no articles have been written.

The SWT tutorial and the examples were also very good. I have a few minor nitpicks: the book was written for eclipse 2.0. Many of the wizard menus shown in the book have changed with version 2.1 (and again I'm sure with 3.0), but if you have some intelligence its not hard to figure out how to follow the examples in 2.1. Secondly I'd like a small section dedicated to getting information from existing views. I often need check information in one view in order to instantiate the model behind another view. The twists and turns of the extensive Eclipse API can make doing this not very intuitive. I've read the Resources section over and over, but I still haven't found the information I need. I eventually figured out some methods that worked after reading a lot of API documentation.

Those are just minor nitpicks, however. Overall I have to say this book is GREAT!! If your are an application builder (especially if you build tools), the power of the eclipse architecture will blow you away. I build tools for a data warehouse and eclipse has transformed my tools from quick-and-dirty tools designed for our specific needs, to near commercial ready plugins.

I can't stress this enough, Eclipse is a BIG deal. Its much more than an IDE. Do yourself a favor and buy this book, you won't regret it.

Michael Crutcher
Texas A&M University

You've downloaded Eclipse. You've coded with the Java IDE. You've loved the refactoring and incremental compilation. Now you have an idea for a new cool plug-in that you think everyone will love.

If this describes you, you need this book.

I've been developing Eclipse plug-ins commercially for over a year. Previously, I had to teach myself by reading and/or searching:

1) Articles on Eclipse.org
2) The online help
3) The newsgroup
4) The source code to Eclipse itself

--not necessarily in that order.

Now I just turn to this book. It almost always answers my questions quickly and succinctly. Even with over a year of Eclipse background gained by teaching myself, I continually feel amazed at how quickly and how much this book has increased the depth of my understanding about how to write Eclipse plug-ins.

It is obvious when reading this book that (as professional teachers/trainers) the authors of this book have already taught this information many times and know what tends to trip people up. Their writing style flows with the ease of great familiarity with and confidence about their material. And their code examples work.

Learning Eclipse, the open-source IDE and tool platform, can be a
daunting task. While a plethora of on-line resources exist for
learning.... knowing where to start, and
remembering what you've read, can be challenging. Finally a book
with much of this in one place: The Java Developer's Guide to Eclipse.

As a long-time lover of books, expecially Java books, I find that
learning from online resources on the web can be sufficient, but
often it's hard to know what you've read, where you stopped, where to
find something, etc. Especially when you're learning something very
new, or very complex, having it all in your hands can be comforting.
(And you don't have to close the book during takeoff and landing.)

Written by Eclipse experts with experience using *and teaching* other
developers in its use, the chapters and exercises are well thought
out. The authors are instructors with experience in teaching Eclipse
to software developers, so have a good knowledge of Eclipse and how
to present and explain it.

This book contains three parts: Using Eclipse as an IDE for
Java developement, Extending Eclipse with plug-ins, and exercises
for all of the above. While a few other books are available on using
Eclipse as an IDE, this is by far the most comprehensive
book on extending it by developing plug-ins.

This book is unique in its thorough coverage of plug-ins (extending
Eclipse: want a new popup menu? code reformatter? Write it yourself!)
but don't overlook its good introduction to using the
Eclipse IDE itself for developing Java code, as well as a great
chapter on using CVS and the Eclipse interface to CVS
code respository that is part of the standard download.

The exercises on using Eclipse and building plug-ins are great, and often walking through the exercise
(resources included on the CD with the book) reinforces or sheds
additional light on what is covered in a chapter. At times
I jumped directly to the exercise after only briefly reading
the associated chapter information, and the hands-on learning
accomplished in this manner was great for this impatient Java
developer.

I took the IBM class with the same name as the book, and found
the exercises in the book similar, if less extensive than, those
included with the course. But the basics are there, including
the exercise that introduces action sets etc. that I referred
to several times in my first plug-in development. A lot of my
code started with the exercise code and grew from there. As I worked
through subsequent chapters and exercises, I came to a clearer
understanding of what had been done in the previous code imported
in the exercises, yet I was already up and running in terms of
developing my plug-in.

The book is written to Eclipse 2.0, with a few comments regarding
changes for version 2.1. While it would be nice to have the minor
2.1 changes reflected in the book, I know the authors had to stop
somewhere to get published. This was the first Eclipse book
published, I understand.

Excellent, and highly recommended for all Java developers wanting
to use Eclipse, and especially for those wanting to develop
plug-ins for extending Eclipse to their own applications.

Back in 80's when unix network programming was a black art, Stevens book on Unix Network Programming showed the way to common programmers about how to write something magical in unix/c/sockets. I can only compare this book with the same spirit.

By reading the book and practicing the exercises in the accompanying CD, it is almost guaranteed someone will not only become a good java programmer but it will also help to extend and share the knowledge of creating tools. Writing good code in java is not simple. This book clearly explains what is really needed from a user perspective to become a good programmer and team-oriented productive resource using eclipse.

The first part explains what a freely available Eclipse can do for you. This is the most comprehensive introduction I have seen so far. It will teach you the smartest way to deal with java projects from a life cycle perspective - create, test, debug and maintain. Each chapter is clear and concise. Tips and tricks are every where.

The second part explain that extending and customizing eclipse is no rocket science. It is hard in a way but definitely manageable even for a starter. Referencing eclipse api is a must while reading this part. I wish some concise reference (like O'Reilly's "...nutshell" book style) would have helped the programmer a lot.

The third part is a gem. Added to the explanation of materials of each chapter, it went far beyond. Just by practicing the examples will take the user to a commanding position. This part also makes the book a handy desk reference on using eclipse tools. I'd also recommend the reader to take a look at the eclipse.org site to check the plug-ins. A lot of them are very useful and free too.

Overall, this book is excellent. In my opinion, this book is one of the major contributors to the community in the increasing the popularity of using eclispe tools, customizing and enhancing it.

Target Audience
Java developers who want to learn how to use the Eclipse IDE or how to develop enhancements for the Eclipse framework.

Contents
This book is a comprehensive coverage of the Eclipse framework, both from the perspective of using the tool and writing extensions to Eclipse.

The book is divided into 3 parts:

Part 1 - Running Eclipse - Getting Started; Using Eclipse; Using Java Development Tools; Debugging Java; Teaming Up With Eclipse; Eclipse Configuration Management

Part 2 - Extending Eclipse - Overview Of The Eclipse Architecture; Getting Started: Plug-in Development; Action Contributions: The Integration Fast Track; The Standard Widget Toolkit: A Lean, Mean Widget Machine; Dialogs And Wizards; Views; Editors; Perspectives; Workspace Resource Programming; Managing Resources With Natures And Builders; Resource Tagging Using Markers; Contributions Revisited; Advanced Plug-in Development; Creating New Extension Points: How Others Can Extend Your Plug-ins; Serviceability; Developing Features; Providing Help; OLE and ActiveX Interoperability; Swing Interoperability; Extending The Java Development Tools; Building A Custom Text Editor With JFace Text

Part 3 - Exercises - Using Eclipse; Using The Java Development Tools; Debugging Java; Using CVS With Eclipse; Modifying Your Configuration With Update Manager; Using The Plug-in Development Environment; Feature Development And Deployment

Review
As an IBM software developer using Domino and Notes, I'm hearing more and more about WebSphere Studio Application Developer. That's the IBM WebSphere Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that is built upon the Eclipse framework. But just what is Eclipse, and why is it so important to you as a developer? This book will help you answer those questions.

The book serves two purposes. Part 1 of the book will allow you, as a Java developer, to understand how to use the tool to code and test your programs. They also devote coverage to how CVS, the open source version control tool. Even if you're not interested in extending the Eclipse tool for your own use, this first part of the book would be worth the purchase.

Part 2 gets into how the Eclipse framework can be used to write your own tools to integrate into the environment. Granted, this part of the book won't necessarily appeal to everyone, as some of you will only want to use the core functionality of Eclipse as an IDE. But you can think of this section as a lesson on the internal architecture of Eclipse. The more you understand about the tool, the more effective you can be with it.

And finally, you have the third part of the book that consists of a number of exercises to bridge the gap from theoretical to practical. Taken as a whole, working through this entire book will give you a solid foundation in Eclipse.

And for Notes/Domino professionals... I think a case could be made that you should seriously consider buying this book to prepare for your future. ND8 is projected to be a rich client built on this platform. By reading up on it now, you'll be prepared for what's coming. And if you're a business partner who builds tools for the Notes/Domino client, you'll need this information to start to figure out how you can transition your business in the future. Don't let it sneak up on you.

Conclusion
If you're thinking about diving into the Eclipse world, get this book. And if you're already an Eclipse user but want to make changes to your environment, this book will give you the information you need to start down that path.