Hi,
Victor Lewis has opened up an enhancement request
titled "[RCP] Support launching from JWS (JNLP)" at
the Eclipse bugzilla site to find out if you can start
up the upcoming Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP)
using Java Web Start.
Jeff McAffer (from IBM Canada) has also opened up a
bug titled "[migration] Invalid assumptions regarding
the form of URLs" to fix up outstanding plugin config
roadblocks so you can use Eclipse plugins packed up in
jars, for example.
Jeff writes:
Who is affected: Plug-ins which make assumptions
regarding their installation structure, location and
the local file system layout.
Description: Methods such as
IPluginDescriptor.getInstallURL() return URLs of a
particular form. Despite this form not being
specified, various plug-ins make assumptions based on
the current implementation. For example, they may
expect to get a file: URL and use URL.getFile() and
use java.io.File manipulation on the result. To date,
this has been a workable but rather unsafe approach.
For example, if a plug-in is installed on a web
server, it is possible that an http: URL would be
returned. The OSGi runtime opens more possibilities
for execution configurations (e.g., maintaining whole
plugins in JARs rather than exploded in directories).
Analysis: The new runtime does not actually break
current behaviour but as described above, it exposes
more cases where current assumptions are invalid.
Plug-in writers should ensure that the information to
which they need access is available via getResource(),
use the relevant API for accessing the contents of a
bundle/plug-in.
A couple of weeks later Jeff adds:
The work to put whole plugins in jars will be done
in January. At this point various parts of Eclipse
are likely making assumptions of the form discussed
here. We will be going through and finding/fixing
those assumptions. The general idea is that one could
take the update site plugin jar and install it without
exploding. We will also likely investigate
alternative structurings so that we don't have to
extract the code jars out of the plugin jar (or pay
some performance cost).
On a different front Martin B�chi has written up a
tech paper titled "Eclipse Plugin-Based Applications
and J2EE Components" that shows you how to tweak the
Eclipse runtime to squeeze everything into a single
jar so you can kick it off using Web Start today.
Martin writes in the executive summary:
The Eclipse core runtime engine provides the
benefits of component-based development and the Plugin
Development Environment (PDE) provides a convenient
means to create plugins, fragments, and features.
However, the runtime engine lacks some features for
building standalone applications and Java 2 Platform,
Enterprise Edition (J2EE) components. We address this
in two ways.
First, we enhance the existing runtime engine with
practical tools for reporting errors, launching
without a workspace, using external libraries,
deserializing objects, remote method invocation (RMI),
and installing Eclipse-based applications with Web
Start.
Second, we introduce an alternative runtime engine
that is suitable for J2EE components because it
supports Eclipse products in a single JAR archive,
does not modify shared singleton resources, and
collaborates with the security manager. This runtime,
which is based on Eclipse code, supports only part of
the original's functionality-most importantly
extension points.
Note, that Martin is not all talk and all source
are included for download.
Full story @
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=48416
and
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=43406
and http://www.choicemaker.com/EclipsePlugins.htm
- Gerald
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