Eclipse console: detect warning and error patterns and make them clickable

Question

I'm running the flex compiler (mxmlc) from ant inside eclipse for some of our builds (they are meant to run on our continuous integration server as well, that is why I don't build using flex builder itself) -- the patterns of mxmlc are not recognized by the eclipse-console, so I cannot click on them.

The patterns is like this:

<absolute path to file>(<line no>): col: <column no> Warning: <message>

It should not be that hard to come up with a regex for detecting these messages.

How do I get eclipse to recognize a new type of error message? Do I have to program my own extension or is there some general support where I can just add a regex to the configuration?

I could also try to make ant translate the errors to something that looks like java errors, but I'd rather make eclipse recognize the mxmlc errors.

Answer 1

Grep Console plugin will do exactly that.

Answer 2

EDIT: I found a plugin that does this with a bit more looking: Sunshade Errorlink (scroll down a bit). I'm not sure exactly how flexible this is, but it mentions ant support.

---

I know you probably want an actual implementation, but here is a rough starting point for a design for the plugin you want. If anyone feels like implementing it, please put a link here to point to it. I might do it myself if I get some spare time (ha!) :)

Assuming that the console is based on TextConsole, which seems reasonable, the spec says:

An abstract text console that supports regular expression matching and hyperlinks.

Pattern match listeners can be registered with a console programmatically or via the org.eclipse.ui.console.consolePatternMatchListeners extension point.

I did a bit more looking, and the spec for that extension point has the following example:

<extension point="org.eclipse.ui.console.consolePatternMatchListener">
  <consolePatternMatchListener
    class="com.example.ExampleConsolePatternMatcher"
    id="com.example.ExampleConsolePatternMatcher"
    regex=".*foo.*">
    <enablement>
      <test 
        property="org.eclipse.ui.console.consoleTypeTest"
        value="exampleConsole"/>
    </enablement>
  </consolePatternMatchListener>
</extension>

You'll want the API of the IPatternMatchListenerDelegate and you should then be able to use TextConsole.addHyperlink to create the link you want.