[cdt-dev] A minimal implementation of a language in Eclipse

["Craig Ugoretz" <craigugoretz@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

 

     I am thinking about helping a software community implement their language in Eclipse.  The name of the language is Mozart-Oz, and its home page can be found here:  http://www.mozart-oz.org/.  Listed below is an email that I received from the SWT mailing list when I queried it.  The responder correspondingly referred me to this mailing list (I think - CDT may not be the same as CDE, although it too deals with the C language).  My basic question at this time is:  what must a person need to do produce a minimal implementation of a language in Eclipse per what Carolyn has outlined for me?  Can you point me in a direction in regard to what I need to learn and what type of artifact should be produced first?  Also, if this not the correct venue for such a discussion, where may I post to?  Thank you for very much for any assistance you may be able to provide me.

 

                                                                                                      Sincerely,

                                                                                                      Craig

 

Craig,

 

Here's more info on what SWT is: http://www.eclipse.org/swt/

If you are serious about developing an Eclipse plugin for any programming language, you might want to start by talking to the CDE people, who developed the C language eclipse plugin.
Implementing a programming language plugin is a huge undertaking, and you need to think about many issues: editing with syntax highlighting, compiling, debugging, etc.
You will have to get to know most of the components in the base of eclipse, and you may discover that you need new functionality in eclipse itself, which you may have to provide patches for and present your case for including them in the base.
Your plugin itself will have to be written in Java - that is the language for writing eclipse plugins, and that is the language for programming in SWT.

The CDE newsgroup is: news://news.eclipse.org/eclipse.tools.cdt
You need to create a password to use it - this is to discourage spammers.
Try posting there to ask what is involved, and where to start.

Good luck, and hope this helps.
Carolyn