If you are already a PDE UI developer, check out the Development Resources.

The Plug-In Development Environment (PDE) is a collection of integrated tools targeted at you, the plug-in developer. Some of PDE's contributions to the Eclipse workbench include:

• New Plug-in, fragment, feature and update site projects creation wizards.
• Multi-page editors to edit manifest files for plug-ins, fragments, features and update sites.
• Import wizards to import external plug-ins, fragments and features.
• Export wizards to build, package and deploy plug-ins, fragments and features.
• a launcher to test and debug your plug-in.
• a search engine to search for plug-ins, fragments, extensions, and extension points with a scope that goes beyond the workspace.
• a log view with sorting, filtering capabilities to view the contents of the log file.

Over the next 6 months the major focus points are:

• RCP tooling.
• Runtime/OSGi tooling.
• Improving feature development tooling.
• Enhancing existing features.
• Reducing the defect backlog

For more detailed information, check out the Development Resources.

3.2 Development Effort - Milestone 2 (September 23, 2005)

• Rich Client Platform
  • Enhance the New Plug-in Project Creation wizard to allow the creation of a headless rich client application.
  • Provide a Hello World headless RCP template.
  • Add Intro support to the RCP Product editor.
• Runtime/OSGi
  • Enhance the New Plug-in Project Creation wizard to allow the creation of a pure OSGi bundle that is not dependent on the runtime layer.
• An Integrated IDE
  • Plug-in working sets should participate in builds, view filtering, searches.
  • Participate in refactoring (manifest.mf, plugin.xml and fragment.xml files).
• Eclipse Application launcher
  • Make the launch configurations portable.
  • Make the launcher tabs and the runner configuration API.
• Reduce the defect backlog.

3.2 Development Effort - Milestone 3 (November 5, 2005)

• Runtime tooling
  • Implement an Equinox OSGi Framework launcher
  • Add a "3.2" target version in the New Plug-in Project creation wizard and start generating manifest files for the 3.2 runtime.
  • More refactoring: renaming a package in an Export-Package header should result in the renaming of that package in all client bundles that have imported it.
• Bundle Execution Environment - Prelude to J2SE5.0 adoption
  • Add support for the Bundle-RequiredExecutionEnvironment manifest header into the PDE plug-in editor.
  • The New Plug-in/Fragment project creation wizard to start asking the user the level of JRE the plug-in is targeted for.
  • Use the Bundle-RequiredExecutionEnvironment header when importing plug-ins to set the correct compiler compliance levels.
• NLS tooling
  • Implement an NLS wizard to externalize plug-in manifest files
• Quick fixes
  • Add quick fix support to manifest.mf files.
  • The pioneer quick fix would be the one to fix the soon-to-be-deprecated Eclipse-AutoStart header.
  • Add quick fixes to resolved dependency problems.
• Manifest management
  • Add a context menu item that organizes the Import-Package, Require-Bundle and Export-Package headers of a manifest.mf file
• Search
  • Participate in Java searches to reveal search hits in manifest files.
• Enhance dependency validation
  • Leverage the new state APIs to determine more precisely the unsatisfied constraints of unresolved bundles.
  • add support to the PDE launchers to optionally perform the validation prior to every launch.
• Reduce the defect backlog.

3.2 Development Effort - Milestone 4 (December 16, 2005)

• Editors
  • Add syntax highlighting to the manifest.mf source page.
  • In the product editor, add the option to specify different program/VM arguments per platform (linux, macosx, solaris, win32).
  • Start leveraging the upcoming Eclipse Forms error reporting in PDE editors.
• Schema Editor
  • Rework the entire editor for improved usability.
  • Add support to deprecate extensions and specify a replacement.
  • Add support to specify whether a client of an extension must add the plug-in to its list of dependencies.
• Execution Environment
  • Connect the runtime's notion of an execution environment with the new upcoming concept in JDT/Debug
  • Tie the entire Execution Environment together.
• Target Management
  • Relax the rules when resolving the target platform to exclude only unresolved singleton plug-ins
  • Introduce an org.eclipse.pde.core.targetProfiles extension point for people to contribute target profiles
  • Contribute two feature-based target profiles (RCP and SDK)
  • Implement a Target Profile editor
  • Introduce easy ways to switch target profiles: via a context menu and on the target platform preference page.
• Automated management of manifest.mf files
  • Allow users to augment their plug-in development classpath by adding potential dependencies to the build.properties file.
  • As users use code from these potential dependencies, manage the manifest.mf by modifying the Import-Package/Require-Bundle appropriately.
• Reduce the defect backlog

If you are interested in participating in the development of the PDE UI component, check out the developer's mailing list: pde-ui-dev@eclipse.org. Chat with people there about your problems and interests, and find out what you can do to help.

In particular, if you have written (or have ideas for) any utilities, "spy" functions, code generators, transformers, importers, exporters, or any other code that you find useful (or would find useful) for development of plug-ins, and would like to get involved in getting the function integrated as part of PDE, we would like to hear from you.

For more detailed information, check out the Development Resources.