Re: [e4-dev] AJAX-based Eclipse Project Explorer

[Christoph Dorn <christoph@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Boris,

Would you be able to join us at irc://irc.freenode.net/#eclipse-e4 for some higher-bandwidth communication, with the goal of getting you started? See http://wiki.eclipse.org/IRC for how to connect.

Yes. I'll ping you via IRC in the next few days.

Some more background info below.

Yes, at least in the e4 context. The support is very rudimentary, using Rhino as the _javascript_ engine. We also did some experiments with using an embedded web browser (e.g. Firefox) which is probably what we would need for what you have in mind.

Firefox would be ideal for me for any visual components (extensibility, firebug). Building an event system based on JSON data structures to communicate between eclipse and JS running in firefox would be needed (I am assuming there is nothing in place yet).

I am doing some work in this direction we could leverage (Wildfire: http://www.wildfirehq.org/). My focus with wildfire is currently on PHP to and from _javascript_, but adding Java to the mix won't be a problem. The advantage of the wildfire approach is that it does not matter where the two components communicating are. They could be in two different applications, one application or in a client/server setup. The theory works, I will have a working prototype (as a firefox extension) soon. Working through performance and latency issues may take some time but should be doable with relative ease by adopting proven message systems to do the actual message delivery.

At first glance, using Rhino for non-visual plugins may make the most sense as it would allow extensive integration between java and rhino-JS. Wildfire could also be used to load plugins into rhino and have them communicate with any other wildfire plugin.

Using wildfire and communicating via simple TCP servers channeling JSON may allow us to get something working very quickly. We can then look at more integrated (read: less overhead) communication channels using lower-level implementations. The wildfire protocol will support multiple channels, selecting the most efficient based on where the two parties communicating are.

Sure, ideally I would do some hand-holding over IRC if that's possible for you.

Great. Thanks!

Do you think the server side would be implemented in _javascript_ as well, or Java, or some other language?

If we abstract the communication with any plugins using the wildfire protocol we will already have libraries for wildfire for _javascript_, PHP and Java that will run in any environment supporting these languages. I imagine there will be a common _javascript_+Wildfire SDK for pre-wired and integrated JS UI components (something I am working on as well using an advanced _javascript_ template engine taken from firbug: http://www.christophdorn.com/Blog/category/domplate/) that can be serviced from any language with wildfire support.

Providing integrations with frameworks using these libraries will be up to the individual project communities. I will be working on one for Zend Framework (ObjectOriented PHP) we can use as a reference implementation.

This is an excellent idea. I have used Firebug but don't know anything about how it works, and would be interested in learning something about this from you.

I'd be happy to share what I know.

Christoph