[news.eclipse.tools] Re: Debugging plugin startup ?

[john_arthorne@xxxxxxx (John Arthorne)]

Read below for more information on debug trace facilities.  We are
currently working on trying to improve error reporting in these cases,
so please let me know in the end what the problem was.  If you're willing
to email me your plugin, or some subset that reproduces the problem,
I'd be willing to look at it.

The two phases that this debugging captures is plugin registry
processing and plugin activation.  For the first one, set the following:

org.eclipse.core.runtime/debug=true
org.eclipse.core.runtime/registry/debug=true
org.eclipse.core.runtime/registry/debug/resolve=true

The output should contain one or more lines that reference your
plugin.xml file.  This says that your plugin.xml has been found
and processed. If this doesn't appear, then some possiblities are:
 - your project is not in the "plugins" directory of the target
 - your project is missing a top-level file called "plugin.xml"
 - your plugin.xml is a hidden file, or does not grant read permission
 - something about your plugin.xml is choking the registry reader
    (in which case we really want to see your XML file).

If plugin processing was successful, the next step is to see if
your plugin is being activated, by setting:

org.eclipse.core.runtime/debug=true
org.eclipse.core.runtime/loader/debug=true
org.eclipse.core.runtime/loader/debug/create=true
org.eclipse.core.runtime/loader/debug/activateplugin=true

When these are set, it should output a message when your plugin
classloader is created, and when your plugin gets activated (typically 
by some user action).  If this doesn't happen, there was some 
activation failure (error in your constructors, lack of 
appropriate constructor, error  in startup() method, etc).

Hope this helps narrow it down...

Larry Bergman wrote:

> I gave this a try this morning.  Works as advertised, but I'm not sure how to
> make use of it.  I started by setting all of the options to "true" - this
> generates huge volumes of data (no big surprise) - so I redirected to a file,
> and while running Eclipse in this debugging mode, started up a plugin
("Run-time
> workbench") in my workspace that I know works fine.  I searched the debug
output
> for the name of the plugin directory and the name of the plugin .class file.
I
> got no hits.  I also searched for "workspace" and got only the following:

<snip>

> Can you give me some specific suggestions as to how to use this facility (or
> *any* other debugging techniques) to figure out why my plugin isn't getting
> getting loaded (or at least not into the registry).

> Thanks very much,
> Larry


> John Arthorne wrote:

> > There is indeed a verbose mode that can be turned on.
> >
> > 1) Copy the ".options" file from plugins/org.eclipse.core.runtime to
> >    the parent of your plugins directory
> > 2) Tweak flags in this options file as desired (for registry debug
> >    and/or loader debug).
> > 3) Restart Eclipse with the "-debug" parameter passed on the command line.
> >
> > You should now get verbose output about the plugin registry loading,
> > plugin activation, and classloader activity.
> >
> > Larry Bergman wrote:
> >
> > > I'm trying to get a plugin running under the PDE (from my workspace), and
> > > am stumped as to why it doesn't start.  I don't see the plugin in the
> > > target plugin registry, although I've successfully run this plugin in the
> > > past. Since I'm not seeing anything in the console or error log of either
> > > the source or the target, I have no leads to follow on resolving this. 
Is
> > > there some sort of "debugging" or "verbose" mode that I can turn on so I
> > > can get some clues?  I'm at wits end!
> >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Larry