Join us tomorrow at 7am in the Hyatt Lobby (rain or shine) for the last run of the conference.

We will also having a little contest with the chance to win Eclipse.org goodies: (thank you!)

• two black Eclipse.org long-sleeve shirts
• two women’s Eclipse.org polo shirts
• Eclipse.org insulating coffee mugs — battle-tested in arctic Ottawa

38 days left until EclipseCon — Sure, you’ve registered, booked the flight and hotel, checked your passport. Next: pack your running shoes!

Continuing the annual tradition started by Darin, we are organizing another edition of the EclipseCon Exercise:  an easy 3-mile run, starting in the Hyatt Lobby at 7:00 am each morning, Monday to Thursday. The trail is flat and paved and follows the stream / bike path behind the Hyatt.

Some reasons to run with us:

• have fun and enjoy the fabulous Californian weather
• burn off  last night’s food and beverages
• network in an informal setting
• get an EclipseCon 2011 runner’s shirt courtesy of EclipseSource

If you plan to join us, please RSVP on wiki.

Here’s a picture from last year’s group. I hope to have as many join in this year.

See you in Santa Clara,
Elias.

Below some pictures and slides from the event:

1. Michael Galpin (@michaelg) from eBay opened the night with a presentation on ‘Android Development with Eclipse’. He introduced the Android platform and demoed the Eclipse-based Android Development Tools (ADT). Interesting fact: eBay’s mobile applications on Android are enjoyed by more than 3 million users. If you want to learn more about Android, Michael’s upcoming Android book should be a good place to start.

2. John Thomas from RIM continued with ‘BlackBerry Application Development Options‘. BlackBerry developers have a variety of language choices for developing apps, such as Java, HTML5/Javascript and Adobe AIR. All development tools are integrated nicely in Eclipse and Adobe’s FlashBuilder (also Eclipse based). Visit this page for details on BlackBerry app development.

3. Elias Volanakis (@evolanakis) talked about ‘iPad Development with Eclipse RAP‘. After introducing the project I demoed how to write a calculator web-app for the iPad using Java. We are optimizing RAP for mobile devices for the 1.4 release next summer. You can download the slides here.

Thanks for joining us,
Elias.

• Android Development with Eclipse
• BlackBerry Application Development Options
• iPad development with Eclipse

The event is scheduled for this Monday, Nov 8th at 6pm at the Lucky Labrador Beer Hall, 1945 NW Quimby (map).

Please RSVP on the wiki (or sent me an email). Space is limited, so sign up now.

http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse_DemoCamps_November_2010/Portland

Looking forward to see you there,
Elias.

• Version 3.0 announced – we have updated the development plan, skipping the 2.1 release and shooting straight for a 3.0 release next June (Eclipse Indigo). While we strive to keep the bulk of the APIs unchanged, this move will grant us the flexibility to carefully introduce changes needed to support Eclipse RAP.

You can read the full announcement here.

• Riena goes to the Web – We are excited about having all of Riena run on Eclipse RAP and are stepping up the effort.

In the last two weeks we have ported and committed the Riena Navigation to RAP. Thanks to recent improvements in RAP this was a breeze! We also have an automated build for this second platform. Lastly, we have worked to eliminate all compile errors when building against RAP. This should make further development more straightforward.

If you want to follow the effort add yourself on Bug 302893 and read the ‘Riena on RAP‘ page on the wiki.

• Riena at Eclipse Summit Europe - Riena committers are participating at the ESE, November 2 – 4 in Ludwigsburg. We have proposed following talks:

• Riena on RAP (Running Riena in the Web)
• Riena on e4 aka “RCP 2.0″
• SWT on Qt
• Tutorial: dynamic UI – from domain model to RCP app (Riena+Modelling+RedView)

If you are interested in any of these topics: please follow the link and leave a short comment. This will help the organizers decide which talks to approve. Thanks!

I want to thank Oracle and AvantSoft for hosting and organizing the event.

If you are interested in future Eclipse events in the Bay Area, please take a moment to join the Bay Area Eclipse User Group on Meetup.com

“How can I detect that a View has been detached from the main window? I would like to adjust the view’s behavior in that case.”

There is no API to obtain that information directly. However it is possible to do this with a few tricks:

1. detached views have an empty window title (i.e. shell.getText().length() == 0)
2. when a view is detached resize events are fired

Armed with that knowledge we can detect that a view is detached / reattached. The snippet below shows how (tested on windows).

PS: Our eclipse support helps developers use their time efficiently by providing prompt answers to questions like this one.

This is done with an RowErrorMessageMarker. When hovering over the marked row, the corresponding error message will be shown in a tooltip.

IMarker marker = new RowErrorMessageMarker("An error message...", zorro);
tableRidget.addMarker(marker);
// to remove:
tableRidget.removeMarker(marker);

Full snippet here. This is shipping with the upcoming Riena 2.0 M6.

The instructions are based on the latest CDT release (Galileo) and cygwin (make 3.81, gcc 3.4.4). They are applicable to CDT’s managed make projects (that means CDT generates a makefile to build project).

The Pitfalls

It turns out that using a shared library on Windows is not as straight forward as you think. There are several pitfalls waiting for the unaware to fall into:

1. Recent versions of cygwin’s make insist on cygwin-style paths instead of windows paths (/cygdrive/c/foo instead of c:\foo). CDT is not picky about this and will generate an incorrect makefile, if you use workspace relative paths:

make all
example.d:1: *** multiple target patterns.  Stop.

The solution is to use absolute cygwin paths, such as: /cygdrive/c/workspace/mymath

2. The compiler and linker will not find the header files / library unless you set the appropriate parameters. The compiler needs an include path (-I). The linker needs the library name (-l) and library search path (-L). These settings are scattered in two places in the project properties. Their location is not obvious for a first-time user (details below).

3. When launching, Windows will not find the shared library (.dll) and greet you with the error pictured below. Unix users might try to set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH, which has no effect on Windows. The solution is to append the directory containing the .dll to the PATH (MSDN Article). Restart Eclipse for the changed PATH to take effect.

The remainder of the post walks you through the process of creating and using a simple shared library with cygwin and CDT.

Creating a Shared Library with CDT

Follow these instructions to create a shared library project with CDT.

1. File > New > Project > C Project > Next. Project name: mymath. Ensure “use default location” is checked. Note the location: c:\workspace\mymath — we’ll need it later. Project type: Shared Library; Empty Project. Hit Finish.

2. Create a header file (mymath.h) and the corresponding implementation (mymath.c). The example below provides a trivial function that multiplies two integers:

3. Afterwards save and hit Ctrl+B (or Project > Build All) to build the library. If cygwin is on your path, you should see a “Release” folder in your project containing the file “mymath.dll”.

4. For windows to find the shared library, you need to add the directory containing the .dll to your path. On Vista this can be done via: Control Panel > User Accounts > User Accounts > Change my environment variables.

5. Exit and restart Eclipse after changing the PATH. Otherwise the changes will not be picked up.

Using a Shared Library with CDT

Follow these instructions to use a shared library in a “managed make” CDT project.

1. File > New > Project > C Project > Next. Project name: example. Project type: Executable; Empty Project. Hit Finish.

2. In that project create a file named example.c with the following content:

3. Save and hit Ctrl+B to build the project. The second line will have an error: “mymath.h: No such file or directory”. We now have to adjust the compiler and linker settings so that the mymath.h / mymath.dll files are found during the build.

4. Select the “example” folder in the Project Explorer. Select “Project > Properties” from the menu. A dialog comes up. In the tree on the left open: “C/C++ General > Paths and Symbols”. In the “Languages” list, pick “GNU C”. Then hit “Add”. Enter the cygwin-style path to the “mymath” project: /cygdrive/c/workspace/mymath

Caution: When entering the path, don’t use the “Workspace” or “File system” buttons because the resulting path will not be compatible with cygwin’s make.

5. In the same dialog select: C/C++ Build > Settings in the tree on the left. In the “Tool Settings” tab find: “Cygwin C Linker > Libraries”. Hit the “+” icon in the “Libraries” section and add the name of the library: mymath

Caution: if your shared library starts with lib, omit the ‘lib’ prefix (i.e. libfoo becomes foo)

Hit the “+” icon in the “Library search path” section and add the path to the folder containing the shared library: /cygdrive/c/workspace/mymath/Debug

Hit OK.

6. You will be asked to rebuild the project. Answer “Yes”, but for some reason this will not rebuild your project. Hit Ctrl+B to rebuild. The error will go away.

Note: ignore the “unresolved inclusion” warning. It seems that CDT has trouble resolving cygwin-style paths. The generated make-file however will work as expected.

7. Select “example” in the Project Explorer. Right-click > Run As > Local C/C++ Application. At this point you see the result of the multiplication on the console. That means that the shared library was found and used successfully:

Kind regards,
Elias.

Ridgets wrap around standard SWT / RWT controls to provide additional functionality and a better API. One example that you can see below: Ridgets have “markers”, which tag a control as mandatory, wrong or read-only and change the control’s behavior accordingly.

It’s worth mentioning that all three screenshots run from the same code. The only difference is the target environment used (RAP or RCP).

Ridgets styled with RAP's "business" theme

Ridgets styled with RAP's "classic" theme

Ridgets in a regular RCP application

Once this work is completed the Ridget API will be usable for RAP applications as well.

To stay informed about this effort:

• CC yourself to Bug 302893, and
• come to our EclipseCon talk “Riena 2.0 - New & Noteworthy“