Eating the Eclipse 3.1M5a RCP Donut

Download 3.1M5a and check out the new RCP support.  M5a is cool for many reasons but the best is, while Eclipse RCP support has been quietly rolled out since Fall of 2004, it's never been as straightforward to take advantage of until now. 

I heard good rumblings, so I gave the new .product Overview page (shown below) a spin.  It makes the process of configuring and branding your standalone RCP application pure joy.

Having only heard about the RCP in the abstract, I was amazed to be able to adapt my little, experimental  "Language Translator" plug-in for packaging into a complete-with-menu/about/etc., uniquely branded, standalone application in less than two hours.  Apparently, deploying RCP apps with Java WebStart is easy also.  It's remarkable how quickly we advance when a lot of us are all working with the same codebase.

You may consider reading the entire Eclipse Con 2005 RCP Tutorial.  I've skimmed it and it looks delicious.  Yet, tasting this pastry doesn't require starting your own donut shop; it's more like...  going to a donut drive-in.  Ordering is easy, the donuts are good, and you drive away with your partially sipped cup of coffee, happy.  Here are the steps in my little experiment:

1. Build an SWT plugin that can run from it's own main().  I recommend creating a top-most Composite component, that is not the Shell, to house your creation.
2. Create a RCP Product.  Do this in 3.1M5a by going to File > New       > Other...> Product Configuration.  I picked the most complicated "RCP Mail Template" (also demonstrated in the Java WebStart link above).
3. Replace the generated "View" class's appropriate guts with the instantiation of your own plugin's top-most SWT Composite component (not the Shell).
4. Pair down the unnecessary, generated Mail Template code until you end up with merely what your plugin provides.
5. Modify the branding icons and graphics to suit your taste.  It took me no more than 20 minutes to tweak the provided branding-artifact examples to achieve uniqueness.

Admittedly, this isn't the ideal approach to solving your professional RCP needs.  Check out Eclipse Con 2005 or one of its tutorials to learn the hardcore details.  As for quickly getting your own RCP application up and running, try it - I think you'll like this donut.

Comments

[Dylan Greene]

What's RCP?

[Ben]

It stands for "Rich Client Platform." Here's a link that introduces the topic: http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-RCP-1/tutorial1.html

[Wudong Liu]

Is there an easy way to pack and export all the necseeary plugin out of the eclipse to run the RCP application in 3.1M5a?

[Ben]

The short answer is YES. See my blog on Painfree RCP in 3.1M5

To learn more about the RCP go here: http://eclipse.org/rcp/. Ed Burnette's Tutorials 1 - 3 are an excellent introduction to the topic.