Exercise 6 Developing Your First Plug-in

Exercise 6, Developing Your First Plug-in, allows you to choose between two different approaches that provide the same basic result, a working and tested plug-in.

The first approach uses the PDE's New Plug-in Project wizard to generate all the necessary code and the plug-in manifest details for an action extension.
The second approach provides step-by-step guidance, showing all the dialogs and editors that you need to use when creating a plug-in with the PDE.

The generated approach may be faster, but the step-by-step process offers you the chance to use the PDE when the example is quite simple. This allows you to concentrate on using the tool, not the details of the coding at hand. Mastering the use of the PDE will make you more effective as the plug-in development tasks become more complex. The steps presented in the second approach are similar to those presented by the Eclipse SDK's Help > Cheat Sheets > Other > Create an Eclipse plug-in using PDE choice, except this exercise provide additional hints and details along the way.

The result is the same in either case, a running "Hello, Eclipse world" action:

In addition to presenting the steps required to create a simple plug-in, the exercise shows you how to use the Plug-in Development Environment to test, debug, and deploy your work.

Reminder: Unlike some of the earlier exercises, this exercise has no template associated with it. Once you have installed the Eclipse SDK and configured it as described in the book, you can start immediately. Also, remember that if you have trouble during this exercise, look to Section 8, Correcting Common Problems, for possible solutions.