Eclipse Rich Client Platform UI

The rich client platform (RCP) is a major theme for Eclipse 3.0. This is the main plan item:

Enable Eclipse to be used as a rich client platform. Eclipse was designed as a universal tool integration platform. However, many facets and components of Eclipse are not particularly specific to IDEs and would make equal sense in non-IDE applications (e.g., window-based GUI, plug-ins, help system, update manager). The Eclipse Platform should factor out and segregate IDE-specific facilities (e.g., everything having to do with workspace resources) so that a subset of it can be used as a rich client platform for building applications. [Platform Core, Platform UI, Platform Update] [Theme: Rich client platform] (36967)

Additional plan items cover other important issues such as adding and removing plug-ins dynamically.

Note: The following documents are under active development and are being updated by the Eclipse team on an ongoing basis to reflect the latest thinking. The goal is to carve a UI for the rich client platform out of the Eclipse Platform UI. By the nature of this kind of work, it's difficult to plan everything in advance of actually doing the work; so we're not even going to try. Instead, we are revising these documents as we incrementally make our way towards a satisfactory solution:

• Executive Summary of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform UI (includes excerpts from the documents below)

FAQs

• Rich Client Platform FAQ

Articles

• Rich Client Platform Tutorial - Part 1
• Rich Client Platform Tutorial - Part 2
• Rich Client Platform Tutorial - Part 3

Design documents

• Statement of Direction for the Eclipse Rich Client Platform UI
• Eclipse Rich Client Platform UI - Proposed Approach
• Overview of the Generic Workbench
• Generic Workbench Plug-in Structure

Browser Example

To load the browser example source into your workspace, load project org.eclipse.ui.examples.rcp.browser from the Eclipse CVS repository.
Click here for instructions on using CVS with Eclipse.

For instructions on running the example, see the readme file.

To run the example in binary form (last updated June 11, 2004 for the 3.0 RC2 build):

1. Download the RCP Runtime build from the Downloads page, and extract it to a folder such as c:\browser-example.
2. Download the browser plugin zip and extract it to the eclipse/plugins subfolder.
3. Replace the eclipse/configuration/config.ini file with the appropriate config file from the browser plugin. For example, on Windows, copy eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.ui.examples.rcp.browser_3.0.0/config_win32.ini to eclipse/configuration/config.ini .
4. Run: eclipse.exe.

Text Editor Example

To load the text editor example source into your workspace:

1. Click here to download a zip file containing the source for the example.
2. Extract the zip to your Eclipse SDK workspace directory (your host workspace).
3. Choose File > Import > Existing Project Into Workspace.
4. Use the Browse button to select the org.eclipse.ui.workbench.rcp.texteditor directory extracted above.
5. Press Finish.

1. Choose Run > Debug...
2. Under Run-time Workbench, there should be two new configurations: RCP Text Editor (gtk) and RCP Text Editor (win32).
3. Edit the appropriate one as follows:
   • on the Arguments tab, change the workspace location to some directory with write access (different than your host workspace, and different than the workspace used for other launch configs);
   • in the Program to Run group, ensure that the application org.eclipse.ui.workbench.rcp.texteditor.application is selected;
   • on the Plug-ins tab, press Deselect All, check org.eclipse.ui.workbench.rcp.texteditor, press Add Required Plug-ins, and also check org.eclipse.update.configurator.
4. Press Debug.
5. When the RCP Text Editor Example window opens, use File > Open to open a plain text, .xml, or .html file.