Short Story We have just published a tutorial in which we try to answer the most frequently asked questions about starting to develop an application based on Eclipse. It is focused on using Eclipse as a platform, not only as an IDE: See here for the tutorial. Long Story Eclipse is not only an IDE, but also a platform to build applications and tools. The “Eclipse Platform” is a...
Read MoreYes, we love building modular web applications, if they just were easier to deploy on a server! Wrapping OSGi applications in WAR files, apparently still the most popular deployment option for RAP, results in a complicated setup: a web app containing an OSGi runtime together with all bundles, configuration, and a bridge servlet that delegates requests to the embedded OSGi - that's hard to build,...
Read MoreReading the title, you might ask why this could be a problem. Good news: in most cases it isn't. However it can be problem if you use native code in your Eclipse plug-in and run on an older version of Equinox (3.7.2 and earlier). This post describes the problem and possible solutions. The problem On older Windows versions, our Eclipse RCP/RAP application works fine. On Windows 8...
Read MoreOver the last years I have seen many OSGi project, and while I am pretty happy with most of them there is a tendency to oversized launch configurations. Keeping the launch configs lean is not easy because the automatic dependency resolver can not always pick the smallest set possible. And maybe even worse it is not always obvious which bundles you need to select to...
Read MoreWe are currently working on a very interesting project together with basis06 which has Apache Karaf as a target runtime. Coming from the Eclipse space this is really a challenge for the following reason: when you develop OSGi applications within Eclipse you are used to the PDE Tooling (Plug-In Development Environment) together with its concepts like features. You are also used to Equinox with its...
Read MoreEclipse has provided high-quality tools to millions of developers for over 10 years, for free. For the 7th consecutive year, Eclipse will ship a simultaneous release. A simultaneous release is a single, coordinated, release containing dozens of related Eclipse technologies. And for the 5th time, I'm assembling a Top 10 List of Eclipse features that I'm excited about. I've done this for: Eclipse Europa (2007) Eclipse Galileo (2009) Eclipse...
Read MoreIf you use Eclipse to develop OSGi based applications you may use the OSGi Launcher provided by the PDE Tooling. It's cool tooling because it gives you full control over the OSGi instance to be launched. You can choose the OSGi framework (e.g. Equinox or Felix), select the bundles to install and much more. But this launcher has one drawback that hurts every time I run...
Read MoreOn Tuesday, Pascal and I presented "p2, your savior or your achilles heel? Everything an Eclipse team needs to know about p2" where we talked about the 10 most common pitfalls developers face when using p2. More importantly, we talked about how you can avoid them. For those of you who attended the talk, thank-you. I hope you learned something. For those of you who...
Read MoreWhen you face the task of building a Server-Side Equinox or a RAP application (which is just a Server-Side Equinox application) you need to choose a build system from a fairly diverse palette. This choice is never easy because every build system has its pros and cons. In the end it comes down to which one you and others, love or hate. To make this task...
Read MoreA while ago I introduced you to my Google Summer of Code 2010 project, the WAR Products. I really appreciate your participation with feedback and bugs. It showed me that there is a real need for this tooling, so I'm proud to announce that the WAR Products development will not continue in the RAP Project. You may think, "WTF? Odd thing to be proud of." But, it really does...
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