How to create an eclipse plug-in?

Question

I've decided that as a pet project meant for learning, I would create a new Eclipse plug-in that, for a given class, takes all private member names and adds a prefix to their name (it doesn't matter to me if it can already be done or not, this is meant to be a learning experience).

I have never developed an Eclipse plug-in and I'm not sure where to begin. Do I need to install some application for this development? How does it work? Where do I begin?

I did a Google search but all the tutorials and results I found were old and referred to antiquated versions of Eclipse, so I'm not sure if they're still accurate.

Answer 1

The Vogella's Eclipse RCP tutorial is quite up-to-date (eclipse3.5), but for RCP (Rich Client Platform).
It comes with an equally up-to-date Plugin Development tutorial.

Follow that last tutorial and you will have a real good introduction in this Eclipse Plugin development topic.

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Note: for AST-related plugins (Abstract Syntax Tree), the resources are older but still accurate:

See Extract all string from a java project.

Answer 2

I would recommend to start with an plugin example included in the Plug-in Development Environment (PDE) some of the distributions contain it, so look for PDE. Since eclipse plugins are OSGi bundles it might take some time if you're not yet familiar with them, but it is worth.

For details check the following documenations

• Platform Plug-in Developer Guide

• JDT Plug-in Developer Guide

• JDT Plug-in Developer Guide 3.1 as PDF