Exploring Eclipse RCP
A "Rich" Alternative for System i GUI Development
April 15, 2007
Use WDSc 7 for Eclipse RCP Development!
WDSc 7.0 has been available for a month now and it lives up to the expectations. System i Network has articles on the new version and more are on the way.
WDSc 7.0 can be used for Rich Client Platform development! The prior version of WDSc (6.01) did not completely support RCP development because it was based on Eclipse 3.0 and RCP development really needs Eclipse 3.1. WDSc 7.0 is based on Eclipse 3.2.1 ... close enough!
The RCP introductory tutorials which used Eclipse 3.2.x can now be done with WDSc 7. The JT Open toolbox can be used as a plug in instead of an external jar file. That is very neat!
Try these tutorials from earlier in this blog with WDSc 7:
Hands on -- Getting started with Eclipse RCP.
How to modify the Eclipse RCP tutorial (part 1) to connect to a System i.
Continuing to modify Eclipse RC Tutorial (part 1) into a System i client
There are no changes in Ed's tutorial, the first one. In the second tutorial is simplified by using jt400.jar as a dependent plugin (read on). The third tutorial has no changes.
So now you can have it all for a while under WDSc 7. Well at least until Europa rises ... that databinding is something else....
In "How to modify the Eclipse RCP tutorial (part 1) to connect to a System i" jt400.jar was treated as an external jar and added through the classpath, see section "Add jt400.jar to the project classpath".
Instead of following those instructions, do this to add the JT Open Toolbox to the list of required plug-ins.
- open META-INF/MANIFEST.MF with PDE (double click on it)
- select "dependecies" tab, third from left (see tutorial)
- in "Select a plug-in" type
com.ibm.etools.iseries.toolbox
two plugin will be listed
-- com.ibm.etools.iseries.toolbox
-- com.ibm.etools.iseries.toolbox.doc
highlight the first one (not .doc) and press the Add button.
- save the XML document
Now the toolbox is in the list of required plug ins. When you run the tutorials in WDSc the JT Open jar will be found. If you build an application and deploy it the JT Open jar file will be a part of it, just like the other Eclipse plugins.
Continue with the tutorials. That is the only change to do these RCP examples in WDSc 7.
Note that this change was not necessary to make these examples work in WDSc 7, the original instructions would have worked fine. We are benefiting from JT Open being a part ot WDSc and available as a plug-in.
Posted by Bill Blalock at April 15, 2007 12:00 PM
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