Project templates Eclipse / Java

Answer 1

You can also just create your own PDE tooling projwect and extend PDE project templates.

There is a great article at IBM DelevoperWorks network that gives a great introduction to Building templates with the Eclipse Plug-in Development Environment

You can also read up on Eclipse documentation about following PDE extension points:

• org.eclipse.pde.ui.templates -- registers plug-in project content templates that are used to generate code for the new extensions
• org.eclipse.pde.ui.newExtension -- contribute wizards that will be used to create and edit new extensions in PDE plug-in manifest editor
• org.eclipse.pde.ui.pluginContent -- provides for contributing wizards that create additional content of the PDE plug-in projects

Answer 2

Have a look at Gradle, it supports the good stuff from Ivy (dependency management), Maven like Archetypes also.

Quick question though... how often do you have to create new projects ? Is it really that cumbersome that it would define which build system you would use ?

This being said, I do really like to have a standard project structure, saves a lot of time when trying to decide some stupid things that one should not even have to think about...

Answer 3

Whatever you do, for God's sake, don't even think about using the Maven VIRUS for this. Exception: If you hate yourself, and enjoy inflicting needless pain on yourself and others because you get some kind of sick pleasure out of it--then, you should use Maven. If you also prefer to bleed internally while you work, throw in Ivy.

Eclipse generation IS a good idea (and probably ideal for the end users), but realistically to prevent this turning into such a large project, just go with the simple solution: create a template and use some simple method of customizing it. Just use a find/replace or a simple Python script if really needed. It's hard enough coming up with a complete, solid, re-usable template as it is (a project in itself). Let an Eclipse plug-in or other more automated version come later after you have a better idea of how much work this is.

The find/replace or script method isn't "fragile" since your template is going to be small and written by a single author, not some massive production application with who knows what inside of it. More complex solutions are the ones which tend to really become fragile, not the simple ones.

I think this is a fantastic idea so don't let anyone tell you otherwise, I create templates like this too.