We are very pleased to report that the long awaited 2nd edition of the Eclipse RCP book (http://eclipsercp.org) is going to the presses on Thursday, April 15th. That means it should be in the stores by the end of the month. Of course, you don’t have to wait, you can pre-order from Amazon or read it online at Safari. Check out the book website for more info.

In addition to the snazzy new cover, this book is an update of the original content to include new technologies, updated workflows and more detail. Here is the marketing blurb from the back cover…

In Eclipse Rich Client Platform, Second Edition, three Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) project leaders show how to use Eclipse 3.5 (“Galileo”) to rapidly deliver cross-platform applications with rich, native-feel GUIs.

The authors fully reveal the power of Eclipse as a desktop application development platform; introduce important new improvements in Eclipse 3.5; and walk through developing a full-featured, branded RCP application for Windows, Linux, Mac, and other platforms—including handheld devices and kiosks.

Drawing on their extensive experience, the authors cover building, refining, and refactoring prototypes; customizing user interfaces; adding help and software management features; and building, branding, testing, and shipping finished software. They demonstrate current best practices for developing modular and dynamically extensible systems, using third-party code libraries, packaging applications for diverse environments, and much more.

For Java programmers at all levels of experience, this book

• Introduces important new RCP features such as p2, Commands, and Databinding
• Thoroughly covers key RCP-related technologies such as Equinox, SWT, JFace, and OSGi
• Shows how to effectively brand and customize RCP application look-and-feel
• Walks through user interface testing for RCP applications with SWTBot
• Illuminates key similarities and differences between RCP and conventional plug-in development

Hands-on, pragmatic, and comprehensive, this book offers all the real-world, nontrivial code example working developers need—as well as “deep dives” into key technical areas that are essential to your success.

Tags: book, eclipse, rcp, syndicate

Over the past few days I have spoken to many different groups at the EclipseRT days, various democamps and some students in one of our Advanced RCP courses. Each time people have asked…

“when is the OSGi and Equinox book coming out?”

Most were hopeful, some were trying to get a rise out of me. Well, ask and ye shall receive!

I am very pleased to say that the full, pre-copy-edited content is available on Rough Cuts. There are a few minor differences between what is online and what will end up in print but that is mostly a bit of grammar and a few technical fixes. The early versions of all the code is available though there are a few known issues in the packaging that we are still working on.

I am really very happy with how the book has turned out.  The structure has lots of content for everyone.  Tutorials, deep-dives, reference material. As you can see by the table of contents below, we start with some history, context and concepts. Then there is a set of tutorial chapters where we build up an example fleet management application called Toast to have a funky embedded vehicle user interface with Google Earth integration, client0server connectivity as well as a back-end control center for managing the fleet.

The Toast system from Chapter 14, the final tutorial chapter, has been donated to Eclipse as the Toast Examples project where is has been extended to have a RAP UI for the backend, EMF and EclipseLink for data management, ECF for infrastructure bits, etc etc.

The tutorial is followed by a number of deep-dives on key topics such as Declarative Services, the HTTP service, Remote Services (RFC119) and more.  Finally there are a set of reference chapters that go even deeper and look at the grotty issues of classloading, dynamic behavior and third party code libraries. It’s a good range of the popular OSGi concepts and services. Of course, there is always room for more in a 2nd edition! (can’t believe I said that…)

Part I:   Introduction
1              OSGi and Equinox
2              Concepts

Part II :  Tutorial
3              Tutorial Introduction
4              Hello Toast
5              Services
6              Dynamic Services
7              Client/Server Interaction
8             Testing
9              Packaging
10           Pluggable Services
11            Extensible User Interfaces
12            Dynamic Configuration
13            Web Portal
14            System Deployment with p2

Part III: Deep Dives
15            Declarative Services
16            Extensions
17            Logging
18           HTTP Support
19            Server Side
20           Release Engineering

Part IV: Reference
21            Dynamic Best Practices
22           Integrating Code Libraries
23           Advanced Topics
24           Declarative Services Reference

Now for finishing up the 2nd edition of the RCP book.  Chris and I are together this week and will be plugging away at the final tweaks before the copy-editing phase. The first 13 chapters of that book have gone to the copy editors and are available on Rough Cuts.

Tags: book, eclipseRT, equinox, OSGi, p2, rap, syndicate