I just finished giving a talk at Eclipse World entitled Plug-in Best Practices for Rich Client Applications. For those who attended, and anyone else who’s interested, here is a summary list of the practices discusses. Feedback is obviously welcome and much appreciated. Encapsulation Design plug-ins to maximize encapsulation. Expose packages only when forced to. Use… Continue reading Plug-in Best Practices for RCP
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EclipseCon or the beach?
I was just working on my EclipseCon submission when I realized the conference is scheduled over my children’s spring break! So now I have to choose between EclipseCon and the beach. Let me think… um, I choose the beach. Seriously, though, I’ll be sad to miss the conference, and I’m just curious how many others… Continue reading EclipseCon or the beach?
OMG an OFMP BoF!
Do you ever feel overwhelmed by TMA – Too Many Acronyms 🙂 ? Sometimes as a software developer I feel like my job is to figure out William Steig puzzles, except that his make sense! So to translate the title, there is a new Eclipse project proposal – the Open Financial Market Platform (additional info… Continue reading OMG an OFMP BoF!
EclipseWorld is just around the corner (well kind of…)
I’m really excited to attend EclipseWorld in November. I wasn’t able to go last year but have heard from others that the signal to noise ratio was pretty high. The highlight for me will be doing a full-day tutorial on Test-Driven Development with Robert Martin (who’s also a keynote speaker). I’ll also be giving two… Continue reading EclipseWorld is just around the corner (well kind of…)
Running Automated Tests with PDE Build
In a previous post, I provided a set of projects that you could use to get a sample build running quickly. The idea was that getting your first build running is half the battle. From that point on, you can make small, incremental changes to accomplish what you like. A common request I’ve received, though,… Continue reading Running Automated Tests with PDE Build
RCP Obfuscation and File Sizes
In response to my last post on obfuscation, Jeff McAffer asked if I had seen any space savings in the obfuscated code. Well l thought it would be an interesting exercise to run the numbers, and the results were surprising. What follows is the list of plug-ins being obfuscated in my Market Contours application. A… Continue reading RCP Obfuscation and File Sizes
Obfuscating an RCP Application
In this article I’m going to take you on a tour of the process I use to build a large-scale RCP application. Obfuscating an RCP application can seem like a big challenge, but it’s really not so bad. Â
Testing Plug-ins with Fragments
As Eclipse plug-in and Rich Client Platform developers, we face unique challenges in how we structure and execute our unit tests. In this article, I suggest an approach to unit testing based on Eclipse fragments that can help us overcome these challenges. If you find yourself frustrated with your current plug-in testing options, read on!
Getting started with PDE Build
I often work with teams getting started with Eclipse RCP, and the most common complaint I hear is that it’s too hard to set up automated builds. PDE Build can be frustrating to work with because it’s a black box. Your code goes in one side and a fully branded RCP application pops out the… Continue reading Getting started with PDE Build
An RCP Code Encyclopedia
One suggestion I always make to developers getting started with the Rich Client Platform is to set up a research workspace containing all of the Eclipse IDE plug-ins. The Eclipse IDE (along with the PDE and JDT) is the ultimate RCP application and examining this code is the best way to learn how things should… Continue reading An RCP Code Encyclopedia