| [jdt-dev] JDT Goes PDE |
Dear All, I would like to discuss a proposal/vision with you. This idea came to me after having worked through the first hundred pages of Erich Gamma's book "Contributing to Eclipse" and then reverting back to application development in the JDT layer. It felt as if someone had forgotten to shift into the next gear. Background. PDE has shown to us what can be accomplished by developping a software consisting of loosely-coupled components. Regrettably, a lot of what's possible in PDE (on a general architectural level) is currently not possible in JDT. Developping an an application consisting of 30+ components -- some of which are product-independent, others product-specific etc. -- can easily turn into a nightmare. In the Eclipse Corner Article "Notes on the Eclipse Plgin Architecture", Azad Bolour wrote that "The plug-in extension model of Eclipse provides a powerful and general paradigm for architecting extensible systems based on loosely-coupled components". Vision. We agree and at the same time believe that PDE delivers much, much more that just a paradigm, and that it does what no IDE currently can. We therefore propose to transfer selected functionality from PDE down to JDT in a manner that would allow application developpers to develop component-based software. We envision a hierarchy application -- module -- component (somewhat parallel to site -- feature -- plugin) along with manifest files on all levels. We thought about some -- definitely not all -- details, and would love to discuss this. Attached you'll find a ppt including concrete examples hierarchies, manifest files containing parametrization points, configuration points etc. Some thougths on the build process are included as well. Downside: It's in German right now but we'll deliver the English version soon. The manifests are in almost-English, so if you're interested you can dive in nonetheless. Kind regards Thorsten Fink, Ph.D. Software Produktion Verlag für Standesamtswesen GmbH Hanauer Landstraße 197 60314 Frankfurt am Main Telefon: 069.40 58 94-24 Telefax: 069.40 58 94-99 www.vfst.de
Attachment:
JDT_Goes_PDE.ppt
Description: JDT_Goes_PDE.ppt