[ide-dev] Widget and Utils contribution

[Thomas Gossmann <eclipse@xxxxxx>]

Hey guys,

I'm the developer of the composer plugin (which is a php package 
manager) and we are about to migrate this plugin into PDT. We have some 
dependencies to solve and here is one which has a nice contribution to 
eclipse as well. I hope I am on the correct mailing list here, anyway 
please pass me on.

1) History:
The main part of the composer plugin is the composer editor, which is 
pretty similar to the PDE editor. In fact, I even took code from there. 
I realized this code can be used for multiple purposes, editors and 
dialogs as well, because it was already very generalized. I extracted it 
into its own plugin, which I put on github: 
https://github.com/gossi/eclipse-components


2) Packages:
The repo consists a little more than just UI stuff. So let me explain a 
little which packages to look at:
- si.gos.eclipse.actions
- si.gos.eclipse.editor
- si.gos.eclipse.forms
- si.gos.eclipse.parts
- si.gos.eclipse.widgets.utils

basicaly they all work together.


3) Features:

- The most interessting is the parts package I'd say. There you'll find 
typical parts that you see throughout the whole eclipse environment. 
Most typically, this is a list/table/tree on the left, with action 
buttons on the right. There are just multiple parts present with all 
their configuration classes (Taken from PDE).

- Forms: Offer many widgets to build up forms (e.g. in an editor) very 
easily (Taken from PDE).

- Editor: Offer customized sections as widgets that are ready to use in 
a (multipage) editor (Taken from PDE).

- Widget Utils: Especially the parts might occur in an editor 
environment or most often appear in dialogs. Depending on which 
situation, they need to be initiated differently, that's where the 
WidgetFactory comes into play, which is a facade pattern to adopt to 
these two environments and are used under the hood of the parts above.

- Widget Helper: An easy way to help layouting composites in SWT (Taken 
from PDE).


4) The Plan:
We want to use this for PDT and to migrate the composer plugin, yet I 
think a lot of people will benefit from that and the best would be to 
contribute this to a place somewhere in eclipse where it can reach its 
potential.

=> That's my question to you guys:
I'd like to contribute this back to eclipse. What do you think?


In case you agree on this, there is some stuff to do (which you might be 
asking for anyway):
For now and for historical reasons, everything is e3 based, which can be 
done way more easier with e4 and DI. Prior to contribution to eclipse, 
I'd lift the code up onto e4 API.


gossi