[news.eclipse.platform] Re: questions re a non-ui plugin

["John J. Barton" <johnjbarton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Derek Morris wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a plugin (singleton) that offers various common services to 
> several other
> plugins. It does not have a GUI itself. It is also 'standalone' in that 
> it does
> not interact with Eclipse directly, except load/saveState() (see below). My
> questions:
>
> - Can I get it to start/initialise/loadState() without direct calls from 
> each of
> the plugins that use it

Hmm...I guess you mean "with calls to load the plugin explicitly"; these 
common services your plugin implements must be called from you plugins 
right? If so, then your ticket is in MANIFEST.MF, under the PDE this is
shown when you bring up plugin.xml.  You can set Eclipse-LazyStart: true 
 class loading trigger a call to your start(BundleContext). Beware if 
you create or use threading.

> - having done that, how do I get it to saveState() when closing Eclipse?

You can listen for PRE_CLOSE events on projects in
   IResourceChangeListener listener = new MyResourceChangeReporter();
   ResourcesPlugin.getWorkspace().addResourceChangeListener(
      listener, IResourceChangeEvent.PRE_CLOSE);
That way if you plugin only deals with some projects it does the right 
thing for them.  I guess there is an event for workspace and workbench 
close, but most plugins outside of eclipse proper should be per project 
I suppose.

> Thanks