A presentation I gave at the AustinJUG.

1. Eclipse 4.0
and e4
Chris Aniszczyk
Principal Software Engineer
zx@redhat.com
http://aniszczyk.org
http://twitter.com/caniszczyk

2. Howdy!
• Hack Eclipse/OSGi/Git
• Evangelist at Red Hat
• Involved heavily at Eclipse
– Eclipse Foundation Board of Directors
– Co-lead PDE and EGit
• Hacking on open source for a decade
– Gentoo Linux, Eclipse, Fedora...
• I like running (5K @ ~18min)

3. Agenda
Why e4?
Eclipse 3.X and e4
l
e4 workbench mode
Styling and Services
Compatibility Layer
Conclusion and Q&A

4. Lexicon
e4 is an Eclipse.org project for
platform-related incubation, it’s not a
product!
Eclipse 4.0 is a release that contains
some technology from the e4 project

5. Why e4?
• Innovate or become irrelevant
• Use e4 technologies as a
basis for Eclipse 4.X (some
will show up in the 3.x
stream)
• Engage the open source
community
• Build a better Eclipse
– Make it more flexible
– Prepare for the web
– Dynamic languages
– Fix our mistakes

6. Eclipse Competition...

7. Why change?
“We’ve already built all our plug-ins.
The most important thing is
don’t break us.”
(Yes, there is a compatibility layer.)

8. Eclipse is mature and huge...
8

9. Foundations need to evolve...
Eclipse Competition...
Francois Schnell, http://www.flickr.com/photos/frenchy/30217773/

10. Eclipse 4.0 SDK
Early Adopter Release
July 2010

11. 11

12. 12

13. e4 Example
Applications

16. So, what’s wrong with
Eclipse 3.X?

17. Problems with Eclipse 3.x
• Complex
• Lots of API
• Platform functionality
via singletons
• Not easy to test
• Not a consistent way to
define the UI
• UI makes assumptions,
e.g. Editors / Views
• Easy Skinning
• The browser is more
powerful now... RIAs...

18. If only Eclipse application
development would be
easier...
8

19. Eclipse e4 – Building blocks
Declarative Styling
Rendering Engine
Modeled Workbench
Dependency Injection
IEclipseContext
Core Services

20. The Modeled Workbench

21. The e4 Workbench Model
Each application has its live model... think of the browser DOM...
• Built using EMF
• Workbench window
– Menu with menu items
– Window Trim, e.g.
toolbar with toolbar
items
– Parts Sash Container
• Parts
– Part Stack (CTabFolder)
• Parts
– Handlers
– Key Bindings
– Commands

22. The Model is Flexible
No distinction between View/ Editor
Perspectives are optional
Stack / Sash are optional
Several windows easily possible
Flexible Toolbars

23. Parts in e4
Plain Old Java Objects
(POJO‘s)

24. Before e4... inheritance ruled...
OBJECT
EVENTMANAGER
WORKBENCHPART
VIEWPART
VIEW

25. How is this model
translated into UI
components?

26. Model and UI Renderers
Model
I don’t care
who draws me
• The Workbench model
is independent of a
specific UI toolkit

27. Renderers
Renderer Factory
Eclipse default is the
SWT Renderer
Can be selected at
Startup via parameter

28. Renderers
Renderer Factory Widget Renderer
Returns for every
model element

29. Widget Renderer
• Each UI elements gets a renderer
• Renderer manage Lifecycle of the UI-
Element
– Creation
– Model to widget binding
– Rendering
– Disposal

30. e4 and Styling

31. Styling in Eclipse 3.x
• UI styling via
– The Presentation API
– Custom Widgets
• Very limited

32. In reality all
RCP apps look
like the an IDE

33. Eclipse 3.X - IDE Eclipse e4 – CSS Styling
feeling
Example from Kai Toedter
Some elements cannot currently not be styled:
• Menu bar background
• Table headers
e4 supports theme switching during runtime

34. How to enable CSS Styling
Property "applicationCSS” in extension point
org.eclipse.core.runtime.products
<extension
id="product"
point="org.eclipse.core.runtime.products">
<product
application="org.eclipse.e4.ui.workbench.swt.application"
name="E4 Contacs Demo">
<property
name="applicationCSS"
value="platform:/plugin/contacts/css/dark.css">
</property>
</product>
</extension>

35. Example CSS
Label {
font: Verdana 8px;
color: rgb(240, 240, 240);
}
Table {
background-color: gradient radial #575757 #101010 100%;
color: rgb(240, 240, 240);
font: Verdana 8px;
}
ToolBar {
background-color: #777777 #373737 #202020 50% 50%;
color: white;
font: Verdana 8px;
}

36. Assign custom attributes
• Java
Label label =
new Label(parent, SWT.NONE);
label.setData("org.eclipse.e4.ui.css.id",
"SeparatorLabel");
• CSS
#SeparatorLabel {
color: #f08d00;
}

37. The e4 Programming
Model

38. Dependency Injection
• Inversion of control: The necessary
functionality is injected into the class
s
va Clas
Ja

39. Dependency Injection in e4
• JSR 330 compatible injection
implementation (think Google Guice)
– @javax.inject.Inject – Field,
Constructor and Method injection
– @javax.inject.Named – Specify a custom
qualifier to context object (default is fully
qualified classname of the injected type)
• e4 specific annotations... @Optional

40. s
va Clas
Ja
Services are injected
via the the e4
framework
public class ListView {
@Inject
private IEclipseContext context;
@Inject
private Logger logger;
@Inject
public ListView(Composite parent) {
// ...

41. CODE EXAMPLES
rs-photo, http://www.flickr.com/photos/rs-foto/2129343084/sizes/l/

42. Access preference values
IPreferenceStore store =
IDEWorkbenchPlugin.getDefault()
.getPreferenceStore();
boolean saveBeforeBuild = store
3.x
.getBoolean(SAVE_BEFORE_BUILD);
@Inject
@Preference(SAVE_BEFORE_BUILD)
boolean saveBeforeBuild;
4.x

43. Associate help context with control
getSite()
.getWorkbenchWindow()
.getWorkbench()
.getHelpSystem().setHelp(
3.x
viewer.getControl(), some_id);
@Inject
IWorkbenchHelpSystem helpSystem;
... 4.x
helpSystem.setHelp(
viewer.getControl(), some_id);

44. Services

45. Eclipse Application Services (“Twenty
Things”)
 Editor lifecycle  Long-running
 Receiving input operations
 Producing selection  Progress reporting
 Standard dialogs  Error handling
 Persisting UI state  Navigation model
 Logging  Resource management
 Interface to help  Status line
system  Drag and drop
 Menu contributions  Undo/Redo
 Authentication  Accessing preferences
 Authorization
 Don‘t forget: OSGi services are also
available via dependency injection

46. Compatibility Layer

47. Compatibility Layer
• Compatibility layer centers around
org.eclipse.ui.workbench
– Contains code to host 3.x API on e4
• Note: The 3.x workbench API with
some exceptions...
– org.eclipse.ui.presentations
– org.eclipse.ui.themes
– Activities and Capabilities
• API clean plug-ins will run fine

48. Eclipse 4.0 SDK

49. Thanks for listening!
For further questions:
caniszczyk@gmail.com
http://aniszczyk.org
http://twitter.com/caniszczyk

50. Where to go from here
Eclipse e4 Website
http://www.eclipse.org/e4
Eclipse e4 Wiki
http://wiki.eclipse.org/E4
Eclipse e4 Whitepaper
http://www.eclipse.org/e4/resources/e4-whitepaper.php
Eclipse 4.1 will most likely ship
as part of the Indigo release...

51. License & Acknowledgements
• This work is licensed under:
– http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/de/deed.en_US
• Thank you...
– Boris Bokowski, IBM
– Tom Schindl, BestSolution
– Kai Tödter, Siemens AG
– Lars Vogel, SAP AG