[news.eclipse.tools] PDE needs a decent default for the run time instanc

[Pat McCarthy <patmc@xxxxxxxxxx>]

When we develop plug-ins we use the development instance of the workbench,
the first instance started.
When we test our plug-ins we launch the run time instance from the
development instance.

The PDE preference settings tell the run time instance where it should look for a workspace.
The default is blank, which triggers the run-time instance to see the current development instance workspace directory as the run time workspace directory.

This seems to be causing us to corrupt our development workspace when we shutdown the run time instance.

I think we can all agree that we should not be using the development workspace as the run time workspace.  Given that, shouldn't we expect that:

• The PDE preferences have a default value that does not allow this to occur (seems bad when the default corrupts).
• The PDE preferences dialog should allow for a directory to be identified that does not exist - and create it.  Very painful to have to go create the directory and then use the PDE preference to point to it as the run time workspace location.  I'd vote for install-dir\runtime or \PDE_runtime (install-dir\workspace is the default development workspace).

Seems like something that corrupts by default should also be fixed for
1.0.

Comments?

Pat Mc.