It’s been a very long time since I’ve blogged about my work on the e4 model tooling front but this does not mean nothing happened. I think I have some interesting news to share on features I’ve implemented:
Edit/View XMI-File
Beside editing the Application model using the form based ui the editor now allows you to view and update the model by directly editing the XMI-representation of the model similar to how what you can do with the plugin.xml-Editor provided by PDE.
The editor is currently only provids highlighting and error markers. The reason is that I’m not able to simply include the XML-Editor provided by WTP because that would drag in too many dependencies. To add such a feature would be a nice job for a contributor though – any volunteers e.g. students as a SoC-Project 😉
Support for externalizing Strings
One of the plan items we’ve worked on for the “Eclipse 4.1 Application Platform” was to add Native Language Support (NLS) and a major part of this is to make our application aware of internationalized text values. The process is quite similar to the one used in plugin.xml.
Instead of entering the real value you put it into OSGi-Bundles NLS-Properties-File (by default located in OSGI-INF/l10n/bundle.properties).
The model editor which is going be released as part of M6 is going to provide tooling to internationalize your application with only a few clicks which is once more similar to how you externalized texts using the plugin.xml-Editor provided by PDE.
- Bring up context menu
- Review provided externalization information
Improved C&P Support
Copy and Paste support was not implemented appropriately. It allowed you only to copy and paste inside the left tree area. Since some days this is fixed and you can also use C&P in the form-fields (currently only text fields on the right hand side)
Improved Search support for contributed classes
The dialog to search for contributed classes (the classes handed over to the DI-Container to create instances) has been improved to allow wildcard searchs as part of the package name.
Bundle-Dependency management in wizards
The class creation wizards have been improved so that if they add Java code which requires your bundle to have more dependencies they add them automatically to your MANIFEST.MF so that the generated code can compile.
Runtime Contribution Inspection
This is the feature I’m just working on and I think we’ll be a great way for you to debug the application written on the “Eclipse 4.x Application Platform” because it provides you a deep look in the runtime environment of your application.
The first thing provided as part of this tooling effort is to inspect you the instance of contributed classes making up the parts contents including extra informations for stuff provided by the DI-Container. At the moment only field informations are provided but others – most important Method Injections and @Execute-methods – will follow soon.
Another plan item is to provide informations about the IEclipseContext an Application Model Element is located in so that you can better understand why you’ve got which value injected.
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