Re: [science-iwg] e3 or e4

[<Matt.Gerring@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Kay,

That is really helpful, thanks; I agree with our points.

We have been using OSGi DS to get the services, so the extra step of injection is not a huge gain or loss not to have. Also in e4 there is the org.eclipse.e4.core.services.events. IEventBroker which several programmers have used here to despatch internal events. I presume one could use google EventBus for things like that(?), which is in Orbit. We have an e4 application running e3 under compatibility so simply coding things in e3 going forwards given that our application fits the e3 model, we might be making a pragmatic decision.

It will need some more pondering...

Best Regards,

Matt



-----Original Message-----
From: science-iwg-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:science-iwg-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kasemir, Kay
Sent: 06 September 2016 14:09
To: science-iwg@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [science-iwg] e3 or e4

Hi:

>> Am 05.09.2016 um 11:41 schrieb Matt.Gerring@xxxxxxxxxxxxx:
>> I am working on a new project... Keep things e3 or allow e4 
>> dependencies
I’ve been asking myself the same question, and found no perfect solution.

The Eclipse 3 RCP API offers a lot:
* Online help
* Preference UI
* Search UI
* Navigator Framework
* Console View
* Team (git, cvs, ..) UI
* P2 UI for installing optional features, or to self-update the product
* Many existing tools that you can add to your product

Eclipse E4 offers
* Model
* Dependency injection

The latter is neat if you want to create a new product from scratch, where you don’t need online help, preference UI, ..
Especially if you consider using JavaFX instead of SWT.
Unfortunately, model and DI is pretty much all you get for now.
You’ll need to implement every ‘part’ on your own, including UI for help, preferences, ..

At the 2016 EclipseCon US there was a talk "Tips and tricks for your Eclipse 4 migration” by Olivier Prouvost  and  Brian de Alwis that clarified the situation a bit for me.
They suggested that the “Compatibility Layer” may be misnamed. They saw E4 as a low-level mechanism for creating UI components. RCP adds the “workbench” idea with associated policies, and support for online help etc.
The pure, old Eclipse 3.x is dead and will no longer me maintained.
But many applications that go beyond just a toy demo of yet another address book still benefit a lot from the workbench.
The IDE is very unlikely to be rewritten into pure E4 ‘parts'. It’ll stay with the “Compatibility Layer”, which might better be called “Workbench Layer”.
So if your target platform is Eclipse 4.x, and you use the RCP API related to the workbench (i.e. basically the Eclipse 3 API), you can call that an Eclipse 4 application. You can also use an “e4view” for parts that are coded on the E4 model level, or add some parts via E4 model fragments, but overall you’re still in the workbench situation and a lot of code will use the existing Eclipse3 API. And: you have to use SWT.

-Kay
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