Headless RCP - with many plugins

Introduction

This is the 3rd blog for making standalone headless RCP. For the other two blogs check the references.

In this blog, we are going to show what is needed for an application that depends on other plugins. For the example, we use JDT and LTK, and show to how to implement a rename refactoring tool.

Procedure

Add source code

You’ll have a lot of errors when you don’t set up the dependencies correctly.

Using Quick help, you can add required plugins.

You see the plugin is added in MANIFEST.

However, the simplest way is to add the dependences in MANIFEST.MF.

Don’t forget to set the singleton flag.

Run Configurations

You need to execute run configuration to click the “Add Required Plug-ins” button for both application and product.

Update the product

Go to the product configuration and update using “Add Required Plug-ins”

References

• http://prosseek.blogspot.com/2012/12/headless-rcp-standalone.html
• http://prosseek.blogspot.com/2012/12/headless-rcp.html

Headless RCP - standalone

Introduction

We have another blog on making a headless RCP (Headless RCP - simple). In this article, we make the program into a standalone desktop RCP application.

Procedure

You need to make a “Product Configuration”.

Select the application that we created before.

Setting the “Product Definition”.

Don’t setup anything in ID.

Update the MANIFEST.MF

Go to MANIFEST.MF, and you’ll see you already have an extension. Add property.

In Dependencies, you have to add the application you just created.

Then click “Add Required Plug-ins”.

You’ll see all the required plugins are added.

Click synchronize to check everything is OK.

And then, you need to add all “.” and all the namespaces additional to your exported one in the “Runtime/Classpath”. Without this configuration you’ll have errors when you launch the standalone program even when your program works fine within the eclipse IDE.

Exporting the headless RCP

You’ll see that the standalone headless RCP is created in the directory you specified.

Executing standalone headless RCP

For execution, you can run “/DIRECTORY_TO_THE_RCP/Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS/eclipse -data WORK_SPACE -clean”. You can make the shell script. Check that it also has the “-clean” parameter.

Run Configuration

You can create a run configuration so that you can launch the product within eclipse IDE.

Add -clean parameter.

Add “Required Plug-ins”

You can run to get the same result.

After the first launch, you have the product in the run button.

Issues and solutions

• It worked fine, but when you do something more and you suddenly have an error, the first thing you need to check is “Run Configurations”, then “Add Required Plug-ins”,
• Not found Activator
  • You may have “org.osgi.framework.BundleException: The activator ABC.Activator for bundle ABC.refactorer is invalid” error when you launch the standalone binary. In that case, add “.” in the runtime class path.

References

• http://prosseek.blogspot.com/2012/12/headless-rcp.html
• http://stackoverflow.com/a/11115914/260127

Headless RCP - simple

Introduction

Creating headless RCP for Juno (eclipse 4) seems to be straightforward, but some tricky configuration and setup is required to have a working headless RCP. This article aims to show the procedure for making headless RCP for Juno.

Procedure

Start with Plug-in Project

Don’t forget to unchkec “This plug-in will make contributions to the UI”.

No template to use.

Now, you have the skeleton code.

Setup MANIFEST.MF

Go to the Extensions tab. You need an “Extension Point” so that you can make an eclipse application.

Click right button to add “run”.

Make the class name as “Application”, clicking “class*”, you can open the Java source.

Just add one line of code.

The default id is “id1” or similar, you may change it into some meaningful name editing “plgin.xml”.

Setup “Run Configurations”

You can execute the application, but you need to setup using “Run Configurations…”.

In the Arguments, you need to add “-clean” for preventing “Workibench has not been created yet” error.

You need to click “Add Required Plug-ins” to make sure all the plugins are included in launching headless RCP.

You can change the workspace location for the headless RCP. As the headless RCP you are making is an eclipse, you can set where it finds the workspace for its own purposes.

You also need to check if you set the “Run an application” correctly set to your application.

Launch the RCP

You can click the run button and select the application you just created.

Reference

• “Workbench has not been created yet” error in eclipse plugin programming
• Headless Hello World in Eclipse