vogella.de

Eclipse supports the concept of natures and builders. For each project you can register a nature for which you can associate a certain builder. A builder is an object that manipulates your resources in your Eclipse IDE and creates other resources.

For example the "Java Builder" is used to translate Java Source files into .class files.

You can create your own builders by implementing the extension point "org.eclipse.core.resources.builders".

Each builder is subclassed from "IncrementalProjectBuilder" and must implement the method build().

In case autobuild is active then this method is called from the eclipse Framework if resources are changed. The method is also called if the user selects "Clean", "Build" or "Build All" from the menu.

Builder are included in the file ".project" in the buildCommands tag.

The method build() get a parameter if a full build (FULL_BUILD) or a delta build (INCREMENTAL_BUILD) has to be done. To get the changes in case of a delta build you can use the getDelta(getProject()) call which returns a "IResourceDelta".

For more information on builders please see the article in the appendix.

Thank you for practicing with this tutorial.

Please note that I maintain this website in my private time. If you like the information I'm providing please help me by donating.

For questions and discussion around this article please use the www.vogella.de Google Group. Also if you note an error in this article please post the error and if possible the correction to the Group.

I believe the following is a very good guideline for asking questions in general and also for the Google group How To Ask Questions The Smart Way.