Description Mel Martinez 2004-04-14 00:39:09 EDT

Attatched is a plugin that provides a simple to use, but extensible API for
one-time configuration pages to be displayed during platform startup.

This allows one-time initialization and configuration tasks to be executed on
behalf of plugins.  Example usecases include gathering server & account
information from a user, initializing databases, etc.

Usage is consistent with using the Eclipse PreferencePage api and a base
abstract FieldEditorConfigurationPage is provided.   Implementors simply extend
this page and register the page via the configuration page extension point.  The
page is executed once when the platform launches for the first time with that
plugin installed.  Pages can declare order dependency on each other through a
'follows' attribute (see the extension point schema for details) to provide
deterministic ordering of page execution.

Pages may elect to not be displayed (supporting ordered execution of non-gui
tasks) and it is possible to programmatically force the re-execution of a page
that has already run.

This framework may be used in a few different ways.  The pages may be executed
during the 'earlyStartup()' phase by uncommenting the org.eclipse.ui.startup
extension in the plugin.xml.  However, we have found it to be better to execute
programmatically during the workbench advisor initialize() or prestartup()
phases (using the plugin's launch() method) because this asserts page completion
prior to any possible view initialization, avoiding problems if views depend on
configuration page completion.  The launch method can be used to
programmatically execute a given set of pages at any time.

Logical enhancements not yet implemented include responding to the dynamic
addition of new plugins to the Eclipse 3 runtime (and hence running any newly
registered config pages).