Eclipse RCP: Tips & Tricks

The Eclipse Rich Client Platform provides a feature rich framework for the development of rich client applications. This talk presents tips and tricks for the development of such applications. Kai introduces some general development tricks that are helpful for all users of the Eclipse SDK, such as the usage of extension locations in combination with links, conditional breakpoints, and some logging tips.

XML contributions vs. code
Eclipse RCP offers several ways of contributing UI elements to the application: Pure Java code, predefined actions and declarative extension points. Kai introduces these different approaches with pros and cons and will give recommendations.

Package and Plug-in Structures
In the Java world we often see best practices regarding how to structure the software. Kai will introduce common practices from the Eclipse world covering how to create package and plug-in structures.

Deployment & Update
One of the building blocks often reused in domain specific rich client applications is "update". Kai discusses several ways how a developer could leverage the update functionality of the Eclipse RCP. Also several deployment options are discussed.

Issues when using 3rd Party Libraries
With 3rd party libraries there are some typical issues in the Eclipse world: How to package them so they could be reused in an OSGi based environment, and how to deal with dynamically created classes that often lead to ClassNotFound exceptions or NoClassDefFound errors.

Total running time 46:06 mintues

(Demo contains a slide by slide breakdown of the agenda in the left menu.)