[platform-debug-dev] String Substitution API

[Darin Wright <Darin_Wright@xxxxxxxxxx>]

A new (experimental) API was added to the debug plug-in in the 3.0 development stream, to support "variables" as used by external tools. This API supports string substitution for program arguments (for example, "${workspace_loc}" is translated to the location of the workspace at runtime). This API was experimental, and has been replaced with new extension points & classes, which are still experimental. All existing variables still work in the implementation. Unless you have defined your own variables, the change should be superficial. The change has been released to HEAD, and will be avilable in next week's integration build (Sept 30th).

The goal of this work is to provide generic variable based string substitution support. The new extension points are 'valueVariables' and 'contextVariables' (replacing 'simpleLaunchVariables', 'contextLaunchVariables' and 'refreshLaunchVariables'). It is perceived that the current implementation could change again, as we try to push the function down into a "lower level" plug-in such that more clients may leverage the support. The current implementation is not dependant on the debug plug-in, although it lives there. 

The related code can be found in 'org.eclipse.debug.internal.core.stringsubstitution'.

Clients that have contributed variables will need to migrate to the new extension points - being aware that they will likely change again.

Darin