Creating an Eclipse RCP 3.5 target platform
As I recommend using a stripped-down target platform containing only required plugins for RCP development, I just had to update the target platform for my German Eclipse RCP training courses to Eclipse 3.5.
Some things have changed in Eclipse 3.5 regarding target platforms. At first, you don’t need to add any JDT plug-ins any more to be able to export applications using the Export wizard in the IDE. Also the validation when exporting plug-ins is much stricter now.
I published the resulting target platform as github project: eclipse_rcp_de. This is a general-purpose RCP target platform. I added the help features and plug-ins and German translations from the Babel project.
Roughly, these are the steps to create such a target platform:
- Download the RCP SDK for your main platform from the Eclipse Project Downloads page. This is the starting point for the new target platform.
- If you want to support other platforms download the DeltaPack. Add the DeltaPack plug-ins to your target platform and exchange the
org.eclipse.rcpfeature with the one from theDeltaPack. - If you want to save some disk space and don’t need enhanced language features like right-to-left text, download the
com.ibm.icu.base binary and source Plug-insand replace thecom.ibm.icuplug-ins with the plug-ins from this download. - Add other plug-ins you want to include in your target platform. I usually add
org.apache.commons.langandorg.eclipse.ui.formsfrom the Eclipse SDK. - You need to change the
org.eclipse.featureto represent the changes from the last two steps. For this, edit the feature.xml file. I changed the version to3.5.0.customized, changed thecom.ibu.icudependency and added dependencies for the additional plug-ins. You also need to remove the signatures from theMANIFEST.MFfile, because otherwise the builder will complain about the unauthorized changes. - If you want to save some more disk space, you can remove all plug-ins and fragments for platforms you don’t support. I removed all plug-ins that are for non-x86 architectures. You also need to remove these from the
feature.xml. - If you want to support help, add the
org.eclipse.helpfeature and all contained plug-ins from the Eclipse SDK. - Add internationalization fragments: Download the language pack
BabelLanguagePack-eclipsefrom the Eclipse Babel Project Downloads download page. You need to go through all plug-ins in theorg.eclipse.rcpandorg.eclipse.helpfeatures and check if there is a translation fragment in the language pack. These need to be copied to the target platform. I created two new featuresorg.eclipse.rcp.deandorg.eclipse.help.dethat contain these fragments.
This is a quite a cumbersome process. This time I did it manually as I’m in a hurry, but I’m looking into finding a convenient way to create such a target platform or automating this process.
