"Add Required Plug-ins" button in Eclipse RCP product configuration?

Question

Hello.

I don't quite understand what plug-ins constitue the list Dependencies when I make a product configuration in Eclipse RCP and what does the button "Add Required Plug-ins" exactly do? Why the Dependencies list is not full from the very beginning and why I have to use that button?

Thank you.

Answer 1

When you develop your RCP application, you specify:

• not enough plugins (i.e. only the one you need to compile, but not their runtime dependencies)
• and/or too many plugins (i.e. you depends on some provided by eclipse, even though you do not use them all)

In order to launch your RCP application as a standalone application, the "Add Required Plug-ins" allows you to validate (i.e. select only the right amount of plugins you actually need) your runtime configuration.

That helps to solve errors like:

• "One or more bundles are not resolved because the following root constraints are not resolved" or
• "java.lang.RuntimeException: No application id has been found."

Not; you can validate your plugins in order to check that launching configuration before actually launching it.