Exploring Eclipse RCP
A "Rich" Alternative for System i GUI Development
June 3, 2007
Regretfully WDSCi 7 cannot be used for RCP development.
You can't use WDSCi 7 (Version 7 of Websphere Development Studio Client for System i) to develop RCP applications -- at least not without making compromises.
Close but no cigar. Maybe next time around.
This information is directly from IBM (the first two points), the result of two PMRs.
1. The javadocs for SWT and JFace are not included to save space.
2. The source for Eclipse is not included for legal reasons.
IBM / Rational doesn't knows what all the effects of leaving out the Eclipse source. For sure without the source the PDE is unable to generate XML code for the extension points. That was one of my PMRs. Anything that plugin development, or Eclipse, tries to build using the Eclipse source as a template is going to fail. There is no list of what is effected by the lack of Eclipse source code.
This is my conjecture
3. I am conjecturing that IBM / Rational does not test the functionality of of the Eclipse as WDSCi is developed. While the prespective "Eclipse Plug-In Development" is maintained, and plugin development is a install option, I don't see how it could have been fully tested and someone not notice the problems leaving the Eclipse source code out causes.
In fairness WDSCi is a huge product. Using WDSCi for Eclipse type development is probably not on the critical path. Perhaps the Eclipse source was left out in the final build and no one realized that would be a problem.
IBM / Rational provides a means to install WDSCi into your Eclipse and I haven't tried that.
My conclusion?
WDSCi is really super but I won't be using it to develop Eclipse RCP applications for the System i.
The Eclipse RCP wizards work and generate sample applications which work. When you to try to build on them the PDE problem comes into play. You can get around it by editing the XML of the plugin directly.
You can get around the lack of SWT and JFace documentation by linking to the Eclipse website.
I'll continue this blog using Eclipse 3.2.2 and borrowing from the iSeries toolbox and JTOpen as needed.
Posted by Bill Blalock at June 3, 2007 12:23 PM
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | |||||
| 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
| 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| 31 |
Blog Policy
Our blogs are editorial content of System iNetwork. We welcome your comments and opinions and encourage lively debate on the issues, and we reserve the right to edit all postings for clarity, length, civility of tone, and appropriateness to the topic under discussion. Comments consisting of product or job solicitations and other spam, profanity, and extreme rudeness will be deleted. We also reserve the right to publish excerpts from the blogs in our e-mail newsletters and print magazine.