[news.eclipse.platform] Re: standalone SWT versus RCP

[David Orme <daveo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

andrew mcintyre wrote:

> Could somebody contrast the advantages/disadvantages of going down the standalone SWT development path versus the RCP path? Especially with draw2d involved?
>
> I'm leaning toward the RCP path because it looks simpler but what do I know, I'm a raw newbie.

RCP

+ Provides higher-level application framework than SWT; more productive 
if you need its features and like (& can accept) its general design 
approach.

+ Can include Eclipse's update manager if you need to supply software 
updates dynamically to clients.  This alone could be RCP's killer app if 
you're a corporate developer.

+ If your application's UI has to scale to huge, epic sizes (like 
Eclipse's UI has to be able to scale), RCP helps a lot.

- For small to medium-sized applications that aren't updated often or 
are client-side-only, RCP is large, heavyweight, and slow.  All that 
dynamic UI stuff that helps so much if your UI has to scale to large 
numbers of features can just get in the way if you have small and simple 
requirements.


SWT (by itself)

+ Small, lightweight, performant.

+ Is low-level.  You can code almost anything in it.

- Is low-level.  Although you can code almost anything in it, it's so 
low-level you have to pretty much code everything in it.


There's a third option not being talked about much, and that is the 
SWTworkbench RCPLite framework.  RCPLite is intended to sit in the 
middle-ground between naked SWT and Eclipse's full-blown RCP.  Here's 
roughly how it stacks up:

RCPLite (http://www.swtworkbench.com/devzone/rcplite/index.shtml):

+ Small, lightweight, performant.  It's designed to be as thin a layer 
as possible on top of SWT and still provide application framework features.

+ Imitates the best features of Eclipse's UI and programming model and 
improves on a few of them.  Most notably these include perspectives, a 
unified view/editor model, and the Action framework (for menu bar and 
tool bar management).

+ Retains Eclipse 2.1's native look & feel.

+ A much simpler programming model than Eclipse's.

- What you gain in simplicity you lose in UI scalability.  RCPLite isn't 
designed to be able to support as many features in the application UI as 
Eclipse can.

- No update manager for RCPLite (yet).


Regards,

Dave
--
Dave Orme
Eclipse Visual Editor Project Lead
Advanced Systems Concepts' Chief Architect
http://www.swtworkbench.com