Show Eclipse RCP's welcome page at every startup

Question

Is there a way to force an RCP product to show a welcome page every time it the RCP was stared? (By default, the Welcome page is only shown for the first time the RCP is stared.)

I tried org.eclipse.ui/SHOW_INTRO=true in plugin_customization.ini, but it did not do the trick...

Thanks, Frank

Answer 1

Remove the -showsplash

Answer 2

In your intro xml you can have something like

<contentProvider id="awc" class="org.eclipse.ui.intro.contentproviders.AlwaysWelcomeCheckbox" pluginId="org.eclipse.ui.intro">
    <text></text>
</contentProvider>

that allows the user to chose whether the intro page is shown every time. It displays a small checkbox wherever you place it. Don't know if it is possible to have it enabled by default.

If you don't want this, you could probably have it defined somehow in your workbench.xml and explicitly load the intro screen when you restore the RCP session.

Answer 3

Alternatively you can set this programmatically, e.g. in your WorkbenchAdvisor's initialize Method.

 PrefUtil.getAPIPreferenceStore().setValue(
            IWorkbenchPreferenceConstants.SHOW_INTRO, true);
 PrefUtil.saveAPIPrefs();

But since PrefUtil is an internal class this is only recommended if you can't set this property in your xml (e.g. you have an intro which is not based on the Standard Intro page)

PS: The problem you have is that as the intro appears, the preference property you have set via plugin.customization is set to false, and plugin_customization only sets preference store default values, as soon as as any component sets the value, the default value becomes obsolete. With this two-liner you're setting this preference key to true on every startup and the intro will appear.