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Migrating_to_Eclipse_4

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This page describes the migration of NiCE from an Eclipse 3.7.2 (Indigo) RCP application to an Eclipse 4.2.2 (Juno) application. The migration is a long running effort and will not be complete until Eclipse 4.x natively supports Eclipse Forms without the 3.x to 4.x bridge. NiCE currently runs fine on a 4.x build using the bridge, but ideally every piece of NiCE would be migrated from the 3.x RCP to the 4.x EAP.

NiCE's Eclipse 4 plug-in is called

gov.ornl.nice.client.e4

and is available in the branches directory of the repository. [TOC]

Time table for full adoption

The public release of NiCE will be built on Eclipse 4 using the bridge sometime in late April after under going thorough tests to compare it to the Indigo-based version.

There are no plans to migrate to a native Eclipse 4 port until Forms are supported.

Changes for the 3.x to 4.x bridge

NiCE does not require any source code changes to work with the Eclipse 3.x to 4.x bridge. However, the following lines must be added to the product section of the

gov.ornl.nice.client.eclipse.rcp plugin.xml

file's "product" section:

&lt;property
    name="applicationXMI"
    value="org.eclipse.platform/LegacyIDE.e4xmi"&gt;
&lt;/property&gt;
&lt;property
    name="cssTheme"
    value="org.eclipse.e4.ui.css.theme.e4_default"&gt;
&lt;/property&gt;

NiCE must also be built on a 4.x target. We recommend the pre-configured 4.2.2 target that can be found in the repository at https://niceproject.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/niceproject/trunk/targets/gov.ornl.nice.target.juno.

Changes for native 4.x pieces

There is no distinction between

Editors

and

Views

in Eclipse 4. Instead, both are combined in the concept of

Parts

. (Recall that in Eclipse 3.x a

Part

was the base class for

Editors

and

Views

.) New parts, but not the SWT code that draw the contents of those parts, have been created for NiCE's e4 port.

PartSashContainers

and

PartStacks

were created to replace the layout configured in the

plugin.xml

file from the 3.7.2 version. A horizontally split

PartSashContainer

was used as the base with the left containing a vertically split

PartSashContainer

with

PartStacks

to reproduce the vertical stacking of the

ItemViewer

and

TransformationViewer

. The same scheme was used on the right side of the base container to reproduce the vertical stacking of the

FormEditor

space and the

Console View

, except the

FormEditor

space is an

Area

, not a

PartStack

Handlers

and

Commands

were added as needed to replace the 3.7.2

Commands

, but in most cases they new

Commands

just called modified versions of the old ones.

Views

are now implemented as standalone SWT classes that have their parents injected with the

@Inject

clause. A very important point that is not mentioned in the more common tutorials is that, at least as far as we can tell,

@Inject

should be used to inject the parent composite on a constructor or

init()

operation and

@PostConstruct

should be called after that step to set input or connect to a remote resource. NiCE's

ItemViewer

is a good example.

Tricky e4 Things

When injecting resources with URIs, it is

bundleclass://

and

platform:/

with the first having two forward slashes and the second having only one forward slash after the semicolon. It is important to note that fixing the width or height of a

PartStack

is done by the putting a number in the obscurely named Container Data field in the editor and that the weighting is done in thousandths. So, to weight two

Parts

that are vertically stacked in a

PartSashContainer

with a 75/25 split, one

Part

must have Container Data set to 75000 and the other should have it set to 25000 instead of .75 and .25 or 75 and 25.

@Execute

is only meant to be used in

Handles

@Inject

and

@PostConstruct

should be used in

Parts

References

The following references were used for this work:

Eclipse 4 (e4) Tutorial by Jonas Helming from EclipseSource - http://eclipsesource.com/blogs/2012/05/10/eclipse-4-final-sprint-part-1-the-e4-application-model/
Eclipse 4 RCP - Tutorial from Lars Vogel - http://www.vogella.com/articles/EclipseRCP/article.html
Eclipse 4 RCP/EAS/Workbench services - http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse4/RCP/EAS/Workbench_Services#Part_providing_a_selection
Eclipse 4 Tutorial by Tom Schindl - http://tomsondev.bestsolution.at/2010/07/28/eclipse-4-0-and-tutorial-on-writing-e4-rcp-application-released/
Eclipse 4.1: Run your 3.x RCP in 4.1 by Tom Schindl - http://tomsondev.bestsolution.at/2011/07/01/eclipse-4-1-run-your-3-x-rcp-in-4-1/