Re: [eclipse-dev] Plug-in Development "enabling" on upgrade

[Timothy Halloran <thallora@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

OK, So what I need to do is open Preferences, Plug-In Development,
Target Platform, and press "Select All" then Apply -- this indeed seems
to work, but I don't agree the PDE explains this all that "well":

(1) The magical "ECLIPSE_HOME" variable seems to be set by doing the
above, but it is not obvious, nor documented, why -- and why wasn't it
set before I did this, I suspect it is set to the value in the
"Application Location:" text box, maybe...but not 100% sure.  My point
is this could be clearer, because:

(2) The errors users get when they check-out a plug-in from CVS relate
to the undefined "ECLIPSE_HOME" variable.  No documentation about fixing
a missing ECLIPSE_HOME exists in the PDE, I searched the documentation
and nowhere is it explained what sets the ECLIPSE_HOME variable, other
than the concept that it is used by the PDE.  Some of our developers
have set it manually (e.g., within the project properties dialog for the
Java build path libraries) is this OK or bad?

The PDE documentation is overall very good, but lacks some "mileage"
from the task-oriented perspective.  I had read the PDE (pre-2.0), but
hadn't put two and two together, also I'll do a more thorough read
through the current version, thanks for the help!

I do slightly question the understandability of the preferences dialog
design in this area, but since this is a pretty advanced area (where
most users don't tread) it isn't a big deal...I don't really think this
is worth a Bugzilla report...there are bigger issues to tackle!

Again, Thanks for the pointer -- after 4 months of plug-in development
it is probably a good chance to look over how the documentation has
improved!

Take Care,
Tim Halloran
Carnegie Mellon University

On Fri, 2002-08-30 at 15:00, dejan@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Timothy,
> 
> A little bit of PDE user guide reading would do a lot. Read the section
> about self-hosting. You will find about two styles (simple and binary
> project self-hosting). If you use simple, you can enable external plug-ins
> from the PDE preference pages (Target Platform). The warning message is
> there to remind you that you didn't do it. In case of binary project
> self-hosting, you need to import plug-ins you need into the workspace as
> binary projects. This is all well explained in the User Guide.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Dejan Glozic, Ph.D.
> Application Development
> D2/MY7/8200/MKM
> IBM Canada Ltd.
> Tel. 905 413-2745  T/L 969-2745
> Fax. 905 413-4854