Eclipse: Building Commercial-Quality Plug-Ins (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The book is focused on providing developers with the definitive resource to which they can turn for in-depth knowledge and practical solutions to challenges encountered when extending the Eclipse environment for commercial use. The authors use a very practical approach to teaching Eclipse. They begin by introducing the Eclipse development environment, and outlining the process of building a simple plugin. The rest of the book is focused on describing each of the various aspects of plugin development and furnishes in-depth knowledge of how to solve the various challenges involved. Sometimes a developer needs a quick solution, while at other times that same developer needs to gain deeper knowledge of a particular aspect of Eclipse development. The intent is to provide several different ways for the reader to absorb and use the information so that both needs can be addressed.

From the Publisher

Build commercial-grade extensions to Eclipse and WebSphere Studio Workbench

This is the first definitive, start-to-finish guide to building commercial-quality extensions for both Eclipse and IBM's WebSphere Studio Workbench. Leading Eclipse developers Eric Clayberg and Dan Rubel don't merely introduce the basics: they show how to add the sophistication and "polish" that paying customers demand.

This book presents detailed, practical coverage of every aspect of plug-in development--with specific solutions for the challenges you're most likely to encounter. It contains everything you need to gain mastery and achieve results: cookbook-style code examples, relevant API listings, diagrams, screen shots, and much more.

Includes a quick introduction to Eclipse for experienced Java programmers
Serves as a systematic reference for experienced Eclipse users
Introduces all the tools you need to build Eclipse and WebSphere plug-ins
Explains the Eclipse architecture and the structure of plug-ins and extension points
Walks step-by-step through building complete Eclipse plug-ins
Offers practical guidance on building Eclipse user interfaces with SWT and JFace
Shows how to use change tracking, perspectives, builders, markers, natures, and more
Covers internationalization, Help systems, feature planning--even branding

This book is designed for anyone who wants a deep understanding of Eclipse, and every experienced developer interested in extending Eclipse or WebSphere Studio Workbench. Whether you're a tool developer building new commercial products, or a user customizing your environment, you'll find it indispensable.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 800 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (June 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321228472
• ISBN-13: 978-0321228475
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #759,590 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Detailed and comprehensive, November 12, 2004

By	Manuel A. Ricart "aricart" (Cottage Grove, MN United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is the better one I have found for learning about plugin development for Eclipse. Most books present a very simple example which fails given the scope of Eclipse and the multitude of extension points. This one doesn't. It tries to address all the things that you may want to do (put an action in different places, integrating with different resource types (files,etc) and existing views (editors,etc), saving, UI, UI decoration, and on and on).

It takes a project and puts it through a complete development cycle building and adding features through the book. While I typically don't like books that take a single example and develop it throughout, this has enough meat to make it very useful. Sections that introduce different concepts/areas, will also give you extension points/view names for those areas so I can see the book as a valuable reference after the initial read.

One very cool thing with the sample project is that the authors develop JUnit tests for the UI actions and things. This shows not only how to automate testing of the UI features, but how eclipse calls your plugins. This provides additional insight that is useful not only in testing, but also in feature development. As it shows you how to load/find certain things programmatically.

If you use books as a tutorial from end-to-end, and tend to type over the examples to build mechanical memory of code, you may run into a few small snags. Chapter 7 misses listing some of the classes you are going to need (minor types, which you can figure out), and some minor disagreements in the code will create errors in the project, but these are easy to fix.

The code style is OK, but could be more concise and streamlined at times.

I would have given the book 5 stars if it wasn't because the book was developed under a pre-release of Eclipse 3.0. This made for some of the screen shots to be inconsistent, and very few of the api calls used in the examples are deprecated. This is more for Addison-Wesley than for the authors. Publishers always want to release books early, and this is hard on both writers (writing against a changing target) and the readers getting something that doesn't match the actual product.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very good book, February 8, 2006

By	Jos van Roosmalen (The Netherlands, Europe) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a very good book because:

1. It doesn't contain cheap fillers such as JavaDoc References, and repeating things endless etc. For people new to Eclipse chapter 1 gives an introduction to Eclipse: it's very to-the-point.

2. It's very comprehensive. From testing (PDE JUnit) to creating your preferences pages. It's well organized.

3. The length of the code snippets is ok (not too long (filler), not too short). A lot of code is supported by screenshots to explain the code/text.

4. It's just complete!

ONE WARNING: This book covers a pre-release of Eclipse 3.0 and NOT Eclipse 3.1. A reprint of this book is expected in april 2006 (according to the publisher's website). If you can't wait: just buy this book. It's really good. If you can wait wait for the 3.1 edition because some things are changed in Ecllipse 3.1.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Before you start developing your plug-in -- read this, November 3, 2004

By	T. Nguyen - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought this book and it has been a tremendous help for me in developing an Eclipse plug-in at my work. I am new to Eclipse much less developing plug-ins for it; but this book goes step by step with plenty of examples. I like how the authors shared various tips and techniques to help you save time. The book is nicely details on all aspect of Eclipse workbench, wizards, views, and perspectives. It has everything that I need to get started on developing plug-ins. I wish I had this book before I started researching about this topic on my own with the Eclipse help files. Use this book as a references or your guide - just use it. It saved me at least two weeks of trying to research it on my own. The other part that I like about this book, is that, it dives directly into the topic with necessary details and examples; rather than sugar coat it with boring information that will make you get another cup of coffee before you start coding. You can litterally pick up this book and start coding your plug-ins.

Also, the author developed some useful tools to help you with your plugins, such as, the "SWT Spy" and "Part Info View" tools. I wouldn't even know where I can get these type of information without these tools.