Question

I’m beginning to develop a GUI based plugin and doing my homework by doing plugin guides ect. But I’m noticing different guides out there for Eclipse plugins and Eclipse RCP plugins. However I can’t get a straight forward difference between the two so am wondering which route I should be going down and should I be using standard Eclipse or be using Eclipse for RCP development?

Answer 1

If you want to extend the Eclipse IDE, as in this tutorial, a simple classic Eclipse is enough to develop “Eclipse plugins“.

The Eclipse platform is structured as a core runtime engine and a set of additional features that are installed as platform plug-ins.
Plug-ins contribute functionality to the platform by contributing to pre-defined extension points. The workbench UI is contributed by one such plug-in.
When you start up the workbench, you are not starting up a single Java program. You are activating a platform runtime which can dynamically discover registered plug-ins and start them as needed.

When you want to provide code that extends the platform, you do this by defining system extensions in your plug-in.
The platform has a well-defined set of extension points – places where you can hook into the platform and contribute system behavior.
From the platform’s perspective, your plug-in is no different than basic plug-ins like the resource management system or the workbench itself.

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But if you want to do an independent application, based on the Eclipse platform, then it is an RCP (“Rich Client Platform”), and you can follow this tutorial.

Eclipse-based applications which are not primarily used as software development tools are called Eclipse RCP applications.
An Eclipse 4 RCP application typically uses the base components of the Eclipse platform and adds additional application specific components.

You would need then an “Eclipse for RCP and RAP Developers” (from the download page).