Plug-in Development Environment Overview
The Plug-in Development Environment (PDE) provides a rich set of
tools to create, develop, test, debug and deploy Eclipse plug-ins, fragments,
features, update sites and RCP products.
PDE also provides comprehensive OSGi tooling, which makes it an ideal
environment for component programming, not just Eclipse plug-in development.
Some of the PDE tools include:
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Form-Based Manifest Editors: Multi-page editors that centrally manage all manifest files of a plug-in or feature.
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RCP Tools: Wizards and a form-based editor that allow you to define, brand, test and export products to multiple platforms.
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New Project Creation Wizards: Create a new plug-in, fragment, feature, feature patch and update sites.
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Import Wizards: Import plug-ins and features from the file system.
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Export Wizards: Wizards that build, package and export plug-ins, fragments and products with a single click.
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Launchers: Test and debug Eclipse applications and OSGi bundles.
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Views: PDE provides views that help plug-in developers inspect different aspects of their development environment.
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Miscellaneous Tools: Wizards to externalize and clean up manifest files.
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Conversion Tools: Wizard to convert a plain Java project or plain JARs into a plug-in project.
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Integration with JDT: Plug-in manifest files participate in Java search and refactoring.
To get started, try out the following cheatsheets:
Creating an Eclipse Plug-in
Creating a Rich Client Application
Looking for more? Discover the latest features in the
What's New section.