Developing Your First Eclipse RCP Application

An anonymous reader writes "The objective of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) is to enable Eclipse to be used in a wide range of end-user applications that are not integrated development environments (IDEs). With the release of Eclipse V3.1, it is easy to create RCP applications. This tutorial will guide you step by step in building your very own RCP application."

Someone tell IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

... that the current version of Eclipse is 3.2.

Eclipse RCP Success Stories

[QuantumFTL]

At Cornell University, my masters project was a snakelike robot arm and companion software control system. With a team of 19 engineers, we put something pretty impressive together, and the only reason we were able to get as far as we did with the GUI was that we used Eclipse RCP as the basis for our program. I've found the interfaces to be very clean and well documented, and the sheer amount of work that Eclipse did for us, both as an IDE and as an RCP framework was amazing.

I also worked with using Eclipse RCP as the basis for the Maestro [nasa.gov] scientific analysis and high-level rover planning software, which is currently used on MER and is scheduled to be used on several future exploration and technology missions. Because the program is considered "class A mission critical," it must either be written entirely from scratch, or use a framework which is very stable and has good vendor support. JPL uses a lot of FOSS, and Eclipse RCP was a wonderful tool for our purposes. I used Eclipse to great effect while helping to develop the Science Activity Planner (the public version of which was also called Maestro and covered on slashdot here [slashdot.org]).

Re:Someone tell IBM

[H0p313ss]

... that the current version of Eclipse is 3.2.

Why is this a troll? 3.1 was released a year ago, 3.2 has been out for almost a month. Fully functional beta builds have been available for months.

An article this out of date is downright embarrassing, or should be to whoever approved it.

SWT and Swing contrasted

[aahmad]

For those trying to decide whether to choose the swing toolkit or the eclipse RCP for your next development project, the following may be useful: http://www.ahmadsoft.org/articles/swingswt/swingsw t.html [ahmadsoft.org]