On Plug-ins and Extensible Architectures

gManZboy writes "Developers who want a flexible, configurable, IDE have long preferred plug-in architectures such as Eclipse over what they might view as the bloated, monolithic alternatives. Ever wondered how it all works? Well, ACM Queue just posted an article by someone who has worked on Eclipse since its inception, Dorian Birsan. He gives a great explanation of the Eclipse architecture as well as a thorough analysis of things to watch out for when developing or working with pure plug-in architectures."

Comments

Can it load an arbitrary text file yet?

[Tim Browse]

I tried Eclipse a while back - the first thing I do with any programming editor is of course to load a text file and try editing it.

So I try to open a random xml file on my hard disk, and, er...wait, hang on, you can't do that. You can only load a file if it's in your project (or view or solution or whatever word it is that Eclipse uses).

I researched a bit, and found some other people ranting about this, but the official line was you should add such files to your project if you want to edit them, it's the right thing to do, blah blah blah.

Call me stupid, but that kind of language lawyer prescriptive idiocy is what I try to avoid, so I went straight back to my bloated monolithic IDE that nevertheless let me load whatever the hell file I want.

I'm downloading the latest version now to see if it will let me execute a technological marvel such as loading a file I want to edit...we'll see.

(Although the last time I tried Eclipse it took me fecking ages to get a JVM set up that would even allow it to start up - "run anywhere", indeed...)

Re:Can it load an arbitrary text file yet?

[TheTomcat]

I see your point, but you seem to be mistaking Eclipse for a general-purpose text editor. It's not.

You wouldn't use OpenOffice's word processor to write code, would you?

Eclipse is tryly an Integrated Development Environment, not a one-off quick-editor.

I've recently come to love Eclipse (for the most part) -- I use it for PHP development, now.. and I keep kate around for quick one-off edits.

IMO, if you need something that does both, then Eclipse is not for you.

S

Sounds like a meta-OS to me...

[ThosLives]

This "plug-in framework" mentioned in the article sounds like it's simply an OS-independent OS. Think about it: it registers "plug-ins" that talk to each other using "defined interfaces" and each "plug-in" must be registered with the runtime. How is this different than installing applications and registering them? There are well-defined interfaces between applications, APIs for displaying information, etc.

I find it amusing that the article even calls the plug-in manager the "kernel". It seems like the research into this field is basically working on some meta-OS rather than something that will provide real extensibility to a system. All it tells me is that OSs need better interface specifications to provide what folks are looking for and so write their own meta-OS.

A well written java program ?!

[tototitui]

I just read a earlier a long string of bashes around java & Open Office and then this item about Eclipse.

Let me tell you this.
A furiously anti-java, C++ist, debianist friend of mine tried it and found it cool for his C++ development !

It is a living demonstration that all that religious wrath around java is a non-sens.

Compared to the usual "Java is slow, Swing stinks, it closed source for playmobile developers."

Eclipse is fast, GTK native, full open-source with a very well done plugin architecture ...

You even have a full GCJ port for the zealots :
http://klomp.org/mark/gij_eclipse/