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Source Code Guide of Eclipse 3.5 (Galileo)

Lars Vogel

Version 2.2

13.01.2010

Revision History
Revision 0.1 - 0.623.05.2008Lars Vogel
Created Article
Revision 0.718.02.2009Lars Vogel
Added CVS access
Revision 0.803.05.2009Lars Vogel
Plugin Spy for menus (Eclipse 3.5)
Revision 0.929.05.2009Lars Vogel
Updated to Eclipse 3.5
Revision 1.001.06.2009Lars Vogel
Added cvs details in table
Revision 1.106.07.2009Lars Vogel
Added cvs details in table
Revision 1.209.07.2009Lars Vogel
How to get commandsId for keybindings
Revision 1.317.07.2009Lars Vogel
Improved cvs section, adding how to access Eclipse PDE cvs repository
Revision 1.426.07.2009Lars Vogel
plugin search, new introduction
Revision 1.529.07.2009Lars Vogel
How to use Mylyn to connect to Bugzilla
Revision 1.609.08.2009Lars Vogel
Improved cvs description
Revision 1.710.11.2009Lars Vogel
Added Project Set Files for cvs access
Revision 1.817.11.2009Lars Vogel
Removed redundant plugin search capter, general rework of the Article.
Revision 1.903.01.2009Lars Vogel
Added WTP cvs repository
Revision 2.004.01.2010Lars Vogel
get the source code via git
Revision 2.106.01.2010Lars Vogel
added SWT spy
Revision 2.213.01.2010Lars Vogel
Added CVS web respository

Eclipse Source Code Guide

This article describes how to access the Eclipse source code, search for plugins or code, demonstrates the usage of the "Plugin Spy" and how to debug the Eclipse IDE.

This article assumes that you are already familiar with using the Eclipse IDE and is based on Eclipse 3.5 (Eclipse Galileo).


Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Import Plugins
3. Plugin Spy
3.1. Plugin Spy for UI parts
3.2. Plugin Spy for menus
3.3. SWT spy
4. Using Search
4.1. Plugin Search
4.2. Java Search
5. Finding commands for keybindings
6. Debugging Eclipse
7. Version control
7.1. CVS
7.2. svn
7.3. git
8. Bugzilla and Mylyn
9. Thank you
10. Questions and Discussion
11. Links and Literature
11.1. Source Code
11.2. Other Resources

1. Overview

Often you need to change or extend Eclipse functionality. This guide try to help getting into the Eclipse source code.

In additional to this developers are frequently advised to read existing high-quality code. Having easy access to the Eclipse sources can be extremely helpful in familiarizing yourself with the coding patterns inherent in Eclipse

Eclipse is a powerful, extensible IDE for building general purpose applications. Some of the key player in creating Eclipse are also well known for their software architecture skills. So you can learn a lot from the Eclipse code base.

The Eclipse code base can be imported directly from your installed Eclipse version or can be access via the cvs or svn version control system. The article describes both approaches.