How to evaluate Eclipse RCP for an in-house project?

Question

I have only a basic understanding of Eclipse RCP. I am about to start an in-house application for our technical support team, that will likely grow over time. The team is distributed across continents so I would like to be able to auto-update the application when new versions are made available. The application aims to capture knowledge from technical support incidents while making it easy to replay data fixes across clients. The things that make eclipse RCP look interesting are Eclipse Communication Framework (ECF) and Data Tools Platform (DTP). My constraints are:

1. Small Team (basically just me for now :)
2. Have to manage it as a side project until its usefulness is proven

I am basically looking for insights from other developers who have worked with Eclipse RCP or who know a better alternative.

Answer 1

The best way to evaluate RCP is to create a small project ... I started with the tutorial here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/os-dw-os-ecl-rcpapp.html and gradually created a less trivial application.

Probably the best single resource I've found is the "Eclipse Rich Client Platform" book (which I initially borrowed from the local university library. The book's web site is here: http://eclipsercp.org/book/.

The only downside to RCP is the size of the distributed program, but the automatic software update feature makes this much less painful and, if you modularize the application using plugins, the user doesn't have to download the entire application to receive updates to one plugin.

Answer 2

Thanks Steve for your answer.