plugin.xml for eclipse equinox app

We already know how to program "plugin.xml" for Eclipse bundle. Now we will program "plugin.xml" for Equinox app.

Compile and inspect default "plugin.xml"

Take equinox application that we created in Equinox tutorial as a starting point.

Invoke on command line: gradle build.

Open file "tutorials/MyEquinoxApp/build/libs/MyEquinoxApp-1.0.0.0.jar", it contains "plugin.xml" with the following content:

<plugin>
  <extension id="Application" point="org.eclipse.core.runtime.applications">
    <application>
      <run class="myequinoxapp.Application"/>
    </application>
  </extension>
</plugin>

We see that Wuff recognized file "tutorials/MyEquinoxApp/src/main/java/myequinoxapp/Application.java" as an application and that it automatically inserted extension-point for it. In general, Wuff recognizes any files matching to patterns '**/Application.groovy', '**/Application.java' as application files and inserts extension-point "org.eclipse.core.runtime.applications" for each of them (although normally there's only one application per eclipse-equinox-app).

Explanation of attributes:

• id="Application": can be any string, was assigned to class name.
• class="myequinoxapp.Application": must be a qualified class name.

Customize application extension-point

Let's customize extension-point "org.eclipse.core.runtime.applications". Our motivation could be that we want different application id. Create folder "tutorials/MyEquinoxApp/src/main/resources", create file "plugin.xml" in it, insert content:

<plugin>
  <extension id="myappid" point="org.eclipse.core.runtime.applications">
    <application>
      <run class="myequinoxapp.Application"/>
    </application>
  </extension>
</plugin>

Compile and inspect custom application extension-point

Invoke on command line: gradle build.

Open file "tutorials/MyEquinoxApp/build/libs/MyEquinoxApp-1.0.0.0.jar", open "plugin.xml" - now it contains our application extension-point, not the default one.

---

The example code for this page: examples/PluginXml-3.

Next page: "plugin.xml" for RCP app.