mr. ankur sharma - pde good practices

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PDE Good Practices

Ankur SharmaPDE co-lead@ankur_sharma blog.ankursharma.org

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#1 Separation of Concerns

• A plug-in is used to group your code into a modular, extendable and sharable unit.

• Do not create monolithic plug-ins

• Separate the platform/locale code into fragments

• Separate Core, UI, Doc, etc

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#2 bundle-localization

• Externalize bundle strings

• ‘Usage of non-externalized strings’ preference

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#3 Lazy-loading

• Prefer to have lazy loading plug-ins– Helps reduce memory footprint– Every plug-in loads with a dependency

baggage– Judiciously make plug-ins reusable

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#3 Singletons

• Prefer singleton plug-ins– but there is a cost involved– singleton plug-ins can not be dynamically

installed

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#4 Use startup code carefully

• Plug-in startup and constructor

• org.eclipse.ui.startup extension

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#5 Prefer target over workspace

• Prefer adding the required plug-ins to Target Platform

• Adding them to workspace makes it difficult to track and manage.

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#6 Share target definitions

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#7 Keep build.properties synced

• Export wizard and headless build uses build.properties

• Use build preferences to keep it in sync with classpath

• This helps avoid “…but it was working in my workspace!” situations.

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#8 EE and Java compliance

• Set the Execution Environments to the lowest required JRE version.

• Set the appropriate Java Compiler preferences

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#9 Use proper version ranges

• Use proper version restrictions

• Also helps in catching API leaks

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#10 Versions are not for marketing

• Version numbering is very important

• Version numbers are not meant for marketing

• Stick to major.minor.micro-qualifier

• Bump up the correct number in version on releases.

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#11 Define API carefully

• Put classes in correct packages

• Public, internal and x-friends

• Don’t Re-export everything

An Eclipse API is forever

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#12 Use API Tools

• API Tools will help you with– #9 Use proper version ranges– #10 Versions are not for marketing– #11 Define API carefully

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thank you