Description Pat McCarthy 2005-01-17 14:22:36 EST

The Eclipse FAQ 223 discusses complex menus
(http://www.eclipsefaq.org/chris/faq/html/faq223.html).  

They are discussed again in the newsgroup
(http://dev.eclipse.org/newslists/news.eclipse.platform/msg32577.html).

And, if you are careful, you can take the provided example and make it work
across multiple plug-ins (plugin a defines the root menu, and plug-in b defines
the additional submenu options found in the menu target defined by plugin a.

But, if this is done in reverse, where plugin a defines the additions and plugin
b defines the root menu target for those additions you get the classic not found
messages such as:
Invalid Menu Extension (Path is invalid): subMenu
Invalid Menu Extension (Path is invalid): subSubMenu
Invalid Menu Extension (Path is invalid): org.eclipse.sample.SampleAction

The plugin ids involved become the issue, the root menu must be defined in a
plugin id that sorts before the additions (a(root),b(add-ons) ok,
b(root),a(add-ons) bad).

This is an issue in that when a product from company qrs (com.qrs...) has menus
designed to be extended by other companies, it works for company xyz
(com.xyz...) but not company abc (com.abc....).  

Gets trickier in that if you add the addon/extension from company abc and say
apply changes dynamically (no restart) it works, but if you restart it fails.

Workaround is to redundantly define the target menu in the contributing plugin
(abc) so it exists even before the owning plugin (qrs) is processed, but this
may trigger other issues long term (translation of property for menu name and so
on).

Snippets of plugin xml below - current set fail at runtime - change plugin id of
the sub menu contributor to get it to work at runtime. 

Root menu plugin.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?eclipse version="3.0"?>
<plugin
   id="com.ibm.actionset.complex"
   name="Complex Plug-in"
   version="1.0.0"
   provider-name="IBM"
   class="com.ibm.actionset.complex.ComplexPlugin">

   <runtime>
      <library name="complex.jar">
         <export name="*"/>
      </library>
   </runtime>

   <requires>
      <import plugin="org.eclipse.ui"/>
      <import plugin="org.eclipse.core.runtime"/>
   </requires>
   
   <extension
          point="org.eclipse.ui.actionSets">
       <actionSet
             label="Sample Set"
             visible="true"
             id="org.eclipse.sample.actionSet">
          <menu
                label="Top Menu"
                path="additions"
                id="complexMenu">
             <separator
                   name="complexGroup">
             </separator>
          </menu>
          <action
                label="Sample Action Complex"
                icon="icons/sample.gif"
                class="org.eclipse.sample.SampleAction"
                tooltip="Hello, World"
                menubarPath="complexMenu/complexGroup"
                id="org.eclipse.sample.SampleAction">
          </action>
       </actionSet>
   </extension>

</plugin>

Submenu plugin.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?eclipse version="3.0"?>
<plugin
   id="com.ibm.actionset.b.morecomplex"
   name="Morecomplex Plug-in"
   version="1.0.0"
   provider-name="IBM"
   class="com.ibm.actionset.morecomplex.MorecomplexPlugin">

   <runtime>
      <library name="morecomplex.jar">
         <export name="*"/>
      </library>
   </runtime>

   <requires>
      <import plugin="org.eclipse.ui"/>
      <import plugin="org.eclipse.core.runtime"/>
   </requires>
   
   <extension
          point="org.eclipse.ui.actionSets">
       <actionSet
             label="Sample Set"
             visible="true"
             id="org.eclipse.sample.actionSet2">
          <menu
                label="Sub Menu"
                path="complexMenu/complexGroup"
                id="subMenu">
             <separator
                   name="complex2Group">
             </separator>
          </menu>
          <menu
                label="Sub Sub Menu"
                path="complexMenu/subMenu/complex2Group"
                id="subSubMenu">
             <separator
                   name="complex3Group">
             </separator>
           </menu>
          <action
                label="Sample Action More Complex"
                icon="icons/sample.gif"
                class="org.eclipse.sample.SampleAction"
                tooltip="Hello, World"
                menubarPath="complexMenu/subMenu/subSubMenu/complex3Group"
                id="org.eclipse.sample.SampleAction">
          </action>
       </actionSet>
   </extension>
   

</plugin>