Eclipse 3.4 M6 - New and Noteworthy

Equinox

• Ability to install complete Eclipse-based applications from scratch, above just augmenting and updating already installed applications.
• Ability to install and manage an application from either inside the application or from another process.
• Ability to install and manage artifacts other than plug-ins and features, such as launchers, root files such as licenses, configuration files, Java VMs, etc.
• Pooling of bundles from multiple Eclipse-based applications in one directory, saving disk space and making installing and upgrading much faster.
• Staged provisioning so that downloading of software can be separated from installation.
• Dynamic discovery and resolution of software dependencies - no more broken "Select Required".
• A more robust transport layer for downloading built on the Eclipse Communication Framework (ECF).
• Dynamic mirror selection and rebalancing based on mirror performance, and multi-threaded downloads.

The new update UI allows you to add update sites or install software into Eclipse using drag and drop gestures in addition to using the dialogs.

To make an update site available in Eclipse, you can drag and drop a site URL link from supported browsers (such as Firefox) into the Help > Software Updates > Available Features page.

You can also add sites using the Help > Software Updates > Available Features > Manage Sites > Add dialog.

If you have already downloaded software that you want to install into Eclipse, you can add a directory or an archive (zip or jar) file containing plug-ins using the same dialog. You can also drag and drop these files from supported platform file browsers to the Help > Software Updates > Available Features page.

Dragging a bundle jar file into Available Features can optionally install the bundle into the dropins folder. You will be prompted the first time this happens.

Once you have made the software available by dragging a URL, folder, or file into the Available Features page, you can push the Install button to install it into Eclipse.

For more detailed information about the new Update UI, see the p2 Getting Started page on the wiki.

The Equinox security API offers a way to describe your login configuration, login modules, and callback handlers via extension points. The class loading magic is done behind the scenes to ensure that your classes fit properly into JAAS.

The SecurePlatform class (org.eclipse.equinox.security.auth package) along with the loginConfigurationProvider extension point are good starting points to explore this functionality.

The storage uses an extensible list of password providers to obtain the key ring password. In this version two password providers are supplied: the UI prompt and Windows login integration modules.

While secure storage is mostly intended to be consumed by other bundles and hidden from the end user, a view of default secure storage and a preference page are provided for convenience.

The secure preferences can be obtained using the SecurePreferencesFactory class (org.eclipse.equinox.security.storage package).

PDE

New API tools are now a standard part of the Eclipse SDK. The following features assist developers with API maintenance.

• New Javadoc tags to annotate API with explicit restrictions (available with code assist):
  • @noimplement - indicates an interface is not to be implemented by clients
  • @noinstantiate - indicates class is not to be instantiated by clients
  • @noextend - indicates a class is not to be subclassed by clients or a method is not to be overridden
  • @noreference - indicates a method or field is not to be referenced by clients
• Report problems during full and incremental builds:
  • Binary incompatibilities between releases
  • Illegal use of APIs based on restriction tags
  • Leaking non-API types from an API package
  • Incorrect plug-in version numbers
  • Missing or incorrect @since tags (quick fix provided)

For more information on API tools and how to configure your plug-in projects for API analysis please see the API tooling WIKI.

Extension point authors will now be able to define attributes that reference attributes defined elsewhere. This is accomplished by setting your extension point attributes as type identifier and choosing the attribute it references. An example of this would be the org.eclipse.ui.handlers extension point. The commandId attribute references commands defined in the org.eclipse.ui.commands extension point.

Extension developers will now be able to browse for valid identifiers given the commandId attribute. Warnings will also be issued for identifiers that don't exist, to prevent the common mistake of a misspelled identifier.

To aid developers working with large sets of plug-ins, it's now possible to filter plug-ins in PDE-based launch configurations.

The Open Plug-in Artifact (Ctrl+Shift+A) dialog has been enhanced to include exported packages.

PDE, in conjunction with Equinox, now supports development against different types of system bundles (i.e., other OSGi framework implementations).

Platform

• Menu bar support
• Command Q support
• Advanced graphics improvements
• Checkbox in Tables and Trees
• Key events
• Tab traversal

Thanks to the community for contributing patches, bug reports and testing.

After determining content types in the background, icons will be replaced with more specific ones if available:

This behavior can be turned off from the General > Appearance > Label Decorations preference page.

The behavior for hyperlinks can be configured on the General > Editors > Text Editors > Hyperlinking preference page.

• Extend StyledCellLabelProvider and provide style ranges for your element labels in update
• Reuse existing label providers by having them implement IStyledLabelProvider and use them with a DelegatingStyledCellLabelProvider or a DecoratingStyledCellLabelProvider

To enable or disable colored labels go to General > Appearance > Enable colored labels. The colors are defined on the colors and fonts preference page.

JDT

Using the Java Build Path page of the project properties, select the Libraries tab and push the Add External Class Folder button:

• unknown types no longer block the renaming of fields:

  

• code completion can now propose methods with unknown types:

  

This timing information is useful as a quick indicator for severe performance regressions. The measurements are based on wall clock time, which means they are highly dependent on the machine type and other processes running on it.

• Use MessageFormat for string concatenation:

  

• Extract local variable (without replacing all occurrences):

  

• Statement location: The template shows up only when completing a statement
• Type member location: The template shows up only when completing a type member

As a result, content assist will only show templates applicable at the current location.

• icon corresponding to the current input
• buttons to go back and forth in the history
• button to enable/disable link with selection
• button to open the current input in an external browser

The action to open the current input in an external browser is also available from the Javadoc hover tool bar.

Quick fixes can be executed by clicking on the link. The actions in the tool bar let you configure the annotation preferences and the problem severity.

The generated Ant script does the same as the export wizard: Creates a JAR file containing all the required libraries in order to execute the JAR file. The Ant script could be used in an automated build process.

The Runnable JAR File Export wizard can be found in File > Export > Java > Runnable JAR file.

Also, to make it easier for you to check out the affected projects from your source repository, the Show as Search Result button can transfer the references into the Search view.

This search refinement can be activated by selecting the new 'instanceof' checks checkbox in the Match Location Selection dialog:

Using this criterion, Java search will report a subset of typical matches among all the existing references, as shown in the example below while searching for references to type Y:

E.g. pasting these lines

		List<Number> numbers;
		numbers= Arrays.asList(1, 2, 42);

into the "_pasted_code_" Java project automatically generates a Java class and main method to hold the statements:

• BatchCompiler#compiler(String, PrintWriter, PrintWriter, CompilationProgress)
• BatchCompiler#compiler(String[], PrintWriter, PrintWriter, CompilationProgress).