[news.eclipse.newcomer] Re: Number of views per plugin?

["Walter Harley" <eclipse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Craig" <CraigFoote@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message 
news:gp49an$5lf$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Are there any guidelines to help determine when a view should be
> contained in its own plugin vs. one plugin containing multiple views?

There is a small but nonzero performance cost associated with large numbers 
of plug-ins.  On the other hand, a single big plug-in can take a long time 
to initially load, depending on its design.

The example of Eclipse itself suggests that generally you should lump 
related functionality together, dividing into multiple plug-ins only when a 
subset of functionality might be useful to other clients and/or when 
platform issues require it.  For instance, the JDT UI plug-in contributes a 
very large number of views and dialogs, but there's not much point in 
breaking it into multiple plug-ins because there's no particular subset that 
is especially useful.  On the other hand, JDT UI and JDT Core are separate, 
because JDT Core can be used in standalone (non-UI) configurations, and JDT 
APT core is separate from JDT core because APT requires Java 5.