[Foreword]
IBM donated 40 million US dollars in November 2001 to establish Eclipse, but open source tool organizations announced in February 2004 that it will form a non-profit organization with a newly established board of directors. New Board members include representatives from HP, IBM, Intel, Ericsson, Montavista software, QNX software system, SAP and Serena software company. Eclipse is a development-extensible framework that extends the frame in the form of a plugin. In Eclipse, everything is a plugin. This implementation mode allows different manufacturers to develop products seamlessly.
First, RCP
RCP (Rich Client Program) is a very useful programming mode of the Eclipse framework. Write an RCP program that there are several basic Eclipse plugins: org.eclipse.core.Runtime, org.eclipse.oscore.Runtime, org.eclipse.oscornfigurator, this is three core plugins for Eclipse Extended framework.
The plug-in org.eclipse.cor.runtime provides an Applications extension, an RCP program is extended from the extension point, and the User's development of the RCP program is also a plugin. When starts, the loader is made by specifying the Application parameter ( Startup.jar) Start your written plugin. You can write a simple script when you start the RCP program, see the examples.
If your RCP program is based on the SWT library, the org.eclipse.swt plugin is also required. The SWT library is a set of cross-platform Java graphics libraries, relative to AWT and SWING, which have better running efficiencies and more friendly interfaces.
SWT is a set of cross-platform graphics libraries, which can be run in a variety of platforms (Win32, GTK, Motif, etc.), in Eclispe, the SWT is implemented as a plugin, which is implemented as a piece of fragment for different platforms (Fragment) , When running, determine which piece of the connection by specifying the parameters such as OS, WS.
In addition to the independent operation, the RCP program is more important to expand itself. To this end, the RCP program must provide several extensions to the outside for other plugins to extend themselves, and the extension points are generally menu, toolbar , View, etc., according to your needs.
Regarding the writing of the RCP program, there is a column on www.eclipse.org to discuss this issue and have a lot of good tutorials.
Second, SWT
SWT is IBM development a set of cross-platform GUI development frameworks (or development kits). Why does the problem have led to a major platform feature. In other words, if the platform A has a window component 1-40 and the platform B has window components 20-25, this cross-platform AWT framework can only provide the intersection of these two sets.
To solve this problem, Sun creates a new framework to use an analog window component (Emulated Widgets) instead of the local window component. This method solves the LCD problem while providing a wealth of window components, but other problems have also been produced. For example, the Swing application is no longer consistent with the local program. Although JVM has great improvements, Swing applications still have performance issues that their local pairing do not have. Moreover, the Swing application consumes too much memory, so it is not suitable for small devices such as PDA and mobile phones.
IBM discovers that these methods cannot meet their needs. Therefore, IBM creates a new GUI library called SWT, which solves the problems in the AWT and SWING frameworks. The SWT framework uses JNI to access the local window component (Native Widget), if a window component cannot be obtained on the host platform, then SWT will simulate this unacceptable window component. Third, CVS
The CVS (Concurrent Version System) version control system (or parallel version system) is a GNU package maintained in the maintenance of the source code in multiplayer development environment. In fact, CVS can maintain the development and use of any document, such as editing modifications to shared files, not just programming. The file type of CVS maintenance can be a text type or a binary type. CVS supports the simultaneous access and modification of the file with a Copy-Modify-Merge change table. It explicitly opens the storage of the source file and the user's workspace, and makes it parallel. The CVS based on the client / server behavior allows it to accommodate multiple users, and it is convenient to constitute a network. This feature allows CVS to become the first choice when people in different locations have handled data files (especially the source code of the program). All important free software items use CVS as a central point between its programmers to integrate the improvements and changes to each programmer. These items include GNOME, KDE, The GIMP, and WINE. The basic work idea of CVS is this: Create a source code base on a server, and the library of many different projects can be stored. The source program is managed by the source code library administrator. Each user first uses the source code library, first download the project file in the source code library to the local, then the user can modify locally, and finally use the CVS command to submit it by the CVS source code library. In this way, it seems that only one person is like modifying the file, avoiding conflicts, but also can do tracking file changes.
[Later]
Analysts say that Eclipse has been separated from IBM, and the potential influence of the organization can expand the potential influence of the organization by making parts providers, including IBM competitors. The new Eclipse board will also consider how to cooperate with the Java Promotion Association (JCP) that is working in Java standardization, and whether to cooperate with the Java Tools Association (JTC).
