DeveloperWorks tutorial : Creating Commercial Quality IDEs on top of Eclipse
Friday, September 08, 2006
IBM DeveloperWorks has published the first of my 3 part series on 'Creating commercial quality IDEs on top of Eclipse'.
This series looks at how to go about designing and implementing commercial quality IDEs as Eclipse plugins using the Eclipse APIs.
Most of the other tutorials on the web you find for creating eclipse plugins mostly discuss one small niche or give tiny example programs towards the end which you then have to figure out how to incorporate in your complex real world app. Also a lot of them keep going through the same thing over and over again, such as how to create a new project in the eclipse PDE and how to declare a extension point and stuff like that.
This tutorial is unique in the sense that it is for the real hard core developers and I discuss the real world design problems when designing a commercial quality IDE, something which is good enough that you can actually sell. I will not be talking about Eclipse plugins in general, nor will I show how to use the PDE, there is millions of pages of documentation for that.
But what I will teach you is how to create real world IDEs and I will show you what problems you might come across while designing one. And I will also show you what separates a commercial quality IDE from one from the little example ones that you can create in a day.
I will be looking at the internals of ANTLR Studio and will describe some of the problems I came across when designing it.
Also I will show you how exactly do you go about using ANTLR while developing your IDE.
So if you are interested in IDE design or developing Eclipse plugins or creating the next Visual Studio or just plain want to figure out how to go about using ANTLR to provide code completion in your IDE, this series is for you.
The IBM guys have incorrectly renamed my series to 'Creating Commercial Quality Eclipse plug ins' which is highly inaccurate since it is not for creating eclipse plugins in general but for creating IDEs.
Anyhow you can find the tutorial at -
www.ibm.com/developerworks
Here is the direct link to first part of the tutorial -
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/os-dw-os-ecl-commplgin1.html
The 2nd and 3rd parts will be published in the coming weeks.
Your feedback is appreciated.
You will notice that IBM wants you to enter a login id to read the tutorial or even to download it as a pdf. So for those without patience to register and fill out the huge forms that IBM gives you, you can just head over to www.bugmenot.com and enter www.ibm.com there to get a login id. This one worked for me -
Id: [email protected]
Pass: mantramantra
Disclaimer: If anybody at IBM has any objections at all with me providing a publicly available password for your site here, I will remove it immediately. But seriously, you guys should not ask for a password just for reading a tutorial and even if you do, atleast make those forms a little smaller.
This series looks at how to go about designing and implementing commercial quality IDEs as Eclipse plugins using the Eclipse APIs.
Most of the other tutorials on the web you find for creating eclipse plugins mostly discuss one small niche or give tiny example programs towards the end which you then have to figure out how to incorporate in your complex real world app. Also a lot of them keep going through the same thing over and over again, such as how to create a new project in the eclipse PDE and how to declare a extension point and stuff like that.
This tutorial is unique in the sense that it is for the real hard core developers and I discuss the real world design problems when designing a commercial quality IDE, something which is good enough that you can actually sell. I will not be talking about Eclipse plugins in general, nor will I show how to use the PDE, there is millions of pages of documentation for that.
But what I will teach you is how to create real world IDEs and I will show you what problems you might come across while designing one. And I will also show you what separates a commercial quality IDE from one from the little example ones that you can create in a day.
I will be looking at the internals of ANTLR Studio and will describe some of the problems I came across when designing it.
Also I will show you how exactly do you go about using ANTLR while developing your IDE.
So if you are interested in IDE design or developing Eclipse plugins or creating the next Visual Studio or just plain want to figure out how to go about using ANTLR to provide code completion in your IDE, this series is for you.
The IBM guys have incorrectly renamed my series to 'Creating Commercial Quality Eclipse plug ins' which is highly inaccurate since it is not for creating eclipse plugins in general but for creating IDEs.
Anyhow you can find the tutorial at -
www.ibm.com/developerworks
Here is the direct link to first part of the tutorial -
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/os-dw-os-ecl-commplgin1.html
The 2nd and 3rd parts will be published in the coming weeks.
Your feedback is appreciated.
You will notice that IBM wants you to enter a login id to read the tutorial or even to download it as a pdf. So for those without patience to register and fill out the huge forms that IBM gives you, you can just head over to www.bugmenot.com and enter www.ibm.com there to get a login id. This one worked for me -
Id: [email protected]
Pass: mantramantra
Disclaimer: If anybody at IBM has any objections at all with me providing a publicly available password for your site here, I will remove it immediately. But seriously, you guys should not ask for a password just for reading a tutorial and even if you do, atleast make those forms a little smaller.
