platform-ui-home/rcp-proposal/rcp_tutorial/tutorial1.html

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-revision 1.2, Wed Jan 14 02:52:29 2004 UTC
+revision 1.3, Tue Feb 17 16:20:38 2004 UTC
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  platform. This tutorial is designed to get you started building RCP applications
  quickly.</p>
  <p><b>By Ed Burnette, SAS Institute Inc.</b><br>
- <font size="-1">January 2, 2004 - Updated for 3.0M6, removed plug-in class</font></p>
+ <font size="-1">February 16, 2004 - Updated for 3.0M7</font></p>
  <p><i>Note that Eclipse 3 is undergoing constant change so the steps you need to
  take, the APIs, and the results may vary slightly (or not so slightly) from this
  description.</i></p>
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  <h2><a name="section_1"></a> Getting started</h2>
  <p>RCP applications are based on the familiar Eclipse plug-in architecture, (if
  it's not familiar to you, see the references section). Therefore, you'll need to
- create a plug-in to be your main program. Select New &gt; Project &gt; Plug-in
+ create a plug-in to be your main program.
+ Select New &gt; Project &gt; Plug-in
  Development &gt; Plug-in Project to bring up the Plug-in Project wizard. On the
  subsequent pages, enter a Project name such as <b>org.eclipsepowered.rcptutorial1</b>,
- and a Plug-in Id (this should match the project name). On the Code Generators
+ indicate you want a Java project, and
- page, select the Default Plug-in Structure, then click Next and Finish to
+ enter a Plug-in Id (this should match the project name).
- generate the template.</p>
+ </p>
- <h2>The plug-in class</h2>
+ <p>
- <p>The generated plug-in class that you may be familiar with in previous
+ The generated plug-in class that you may be familiar with in previous
  releases is no longer required in Eclipse 3.0.
  You can still have one to hold global data if you like, but for this
- example you can just remove it altogether to save a little space.
+ example just remove it altogether to save a little space.
- Right click on the plug-in java file (in our example this is called
+ To do this, turn off the option that says
- RcpTutorial1Plugin.java) and delete it.
+ Generate the Java class that controls the plug-ins life cycle.
- </p>
+ Then Click on Finish to
+ generate the template.</p>
  <h2>The main program</h2>
- <p>The main program implements IPlatformRunnable, which just has a method called
+ <p>The main program for an application implements <code>IPlatformRunnable</code>,
- run(). Listing 1 shows a simple implementation that shows you the minimum you have to
+ which just has a method called
+ <code>run()</code>.
+ Listing 1 shows a simple implementation that shows you the minimum you have to
  do.</p>
  <p><b>Listing 1. RcpApplication class.
  </b></p>
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+Line 103
  <h2>Creating a default perspective</h2>
  <p>
  Next, you must define at least one perspective and make it the default.
- Perspectives are created by implementing IPerspectiveFactory (see listing 2).
+ Perspectives are created by implementing <code>IPerspectiveFactory</code> (see listing 2).
  The important part
- of this interface is the createInitialLayout() method where you position and
+ of this interface is the <code>createInitialLayout()</code> method where you position and
  open any views and/or editors you'd like the user to start with.
  In this example
  we're not going to create any views so it will be a pretty boring perspective.
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+Line 154
  </pre>
  <h2>Plug-in manifest</h2>
  <p>As usual, the plug-in manifest, plugin.xml, ties everything together.
- <i>Note: Future builds of 3.0 will likely change this further.</i>
  The class name in
  the plugin tag refers to the plug-in class we deleted earlier,
  so you should remove the reference too.
  The main program
- class name is defined with the org.eclipse.core.runtime.applications extension
+ class name is defined with the <code>org.eclipse.core.runtime.applications</code> extension
- and the perspective with org.eclipse.ui.perspectives.
+ and the perspective with <code>org.eclipse.ui.perspectives</code>.
- Note you have to manually edit the <code>runtime</code> section to take out
- the reference to org.eclipse.core.resources and add
- org.eclipse.core.runtime.compatibility
- in current builds.
  When you're done you should have something that looks like listing 4.
  </p>
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+Line 240
  Run &gt; Debug &gt; Debug As &gt; Run-time Workbench. Go ahead and try that now.
  It will give you a full blown Eclipse IDE Workbench window because we haven't
  overridden the application name - it is still defaulting to the IDE application.
+ </p>
+ <p>
  To fix this, edit the launch configuration you just created (select Run &gt;
  Debug &gt; Debug..., and then select New_Configuration or create a new one). In
- the Arguments tab, add this to the end of the Program Arguments:</p>
+ the Arguments tab, select <code>org.eclipsepowered.rcptutorial1.RcpApplication</code>
- <pre>
+ for the Application name.
-    -application org.eclipsepowered.rcptutorial1.RcpApplication
+ This comes from the id specified on the
- </pre>
+ <code>org.eclipse.core.runtime.applications</code> extension point
- <p>This name comes from the id specified on the
+ (in this example, <code>RcpApplication</code>), prepended with the
- org.eclipse.core.runtime.applications extension point.</p>
+ plug-in id (<code>org.eclipsepowered.rcptutorial1</code>).
+ </p>
  <p>Now switch over to the Plug-ins and Fragments tab. Select the option to
- Choose plug-ins and fragments, and select the following plug-ins. This is
+ Launch with this plug-in and all of its pre-requisites.
- currently the absolute minimum that will work for a GUI RCP program.
+ Enter the plug-in id (<code>org.eclipsepowered.rcptutorial1</code>)
- <i>Note: Future builds of 3.0 will likely change this further.</i>
+ and press Debug. You should see a bare-bones Workbench start up (see figure 1).</p>
- </p>
- <ul>
-   <li>org.eclipse.core.runtime
-   <li>org.eclipse.core.runtime.compatibility
-   <li>org.eclipse.help
-   <li>org.eclipse.jface
-   <li>org.eclipse.osgi
-   <li>org.eclipse.osgi.services
-   <li>org.eclipse.osgi.util
-   <li>org.eclipse.swt
-   <li>org.eclipse.swt.win32
-   <li>org.eclipse.ui
-   <li>org.eclipse.ui.workbench
-   <li>org.eclipse.update.configurator
-   <li>org.eclipsepowered.rcptutorial1
- </ul>
- <p>Now press Debug. You should see a bare-bones Workbench start up (see figure 1).</p>
  <p><b>Figure 1. World's simplest RCP application.
  </b></p>
- <img src="images/spin.jpg" width="406" height="269">
+ <img src="images/spin.png" width="404" height="270">
  <p>If you don't see this, you should be able to find an error message in the
  run-time workbench's .log file (runtime-workspace/.metadata/.log). Simply bring
  it up in a text editor and look for the most recent errors. You may find it
  useful to delete the .log file before running the program so you won't get
  confused by older messages.</p>
+ <p>
+ <img src="images/tip.gif" alt="Tip: " width="62" height="13">
+ Specify the <code>-consoleLog</code> option
+ in the Arguments tab under Program Arguments to have all error messages
+ sent to the Console. This is easier than searching around for the .log file.
+ </p>
  <h2>Running it outside of Eclipse</h2>
  <p>The whole point of all this is to be able to run stand-alone applications
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+Line 297
    and populate the directory for you.
  </ol>
  <p>To complete the RcpTutorial1 directory, copy the startup.jar file from the Eclipse
- install directory into the top level, and copy the other org.eclipse plug-ins
+ install directory into the top level, and copy all the org.eclipse plug-ins
- from the list of required plug-ins above into the plugins directory. When you're
+ that are required into the plugins directory.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Which ones are required, you ask?
+ You can find out by right-clicking on the project and selecting
+ PDE Tools > Open Dependencies.
+ Add all the plug-ins listed there, including all the ones they depend on (you can
+ see the list by fully expanding the tree).
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When you're
  done you should have a structure that looks like this:</p>
  <pre>
          RcpTutorial1
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+Line 330
  </pre>
  <p>That's all you need to run an RCP application, but it would be difficult for
  anyone to use it without some kind of launching program. Eclipse uses
- eclipse.exe, but we'll just use a batch file. Create a Windows command file
+ eclipse.exe, but for this example we'll just use a batch file.
+ Create a Windows command file
  called rcptutorial1.cmd and place it in the top level RcpTutorial1 directory. A Unix shell
  script version would be similar.
  <pre>
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+Line 373
  double-clicking on your new shortcut to try it out. You may want to edit the
  shortcut (right click on it and select Properties) to change the default working
  directory.</p>
+ <p>
+ <img src="images/tip.gif" alt="Tip: " width="62" height="13">
+ For fully branding a program with a splash screen, custom icons, and so forth
+ you'll need to define a primary feature, some configuration files, and use
+ the eclipse.exe launcher.
+ See the online help under Platform Plug-in Developer Guide >
+ Programmer's Guide > Packaging and delivering Eclipse based products
+ for more information.
+ </p>
  <h2>Conclusion</h2>
  <p>In part 1 of this tutorial, we looked at what is necessary to create a
  bare-bones Rich Client application. The next part will delve into customizations

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