Question

Our Eclipse RCP application was originally built in the 3.1/3.2 era and was running on 3.2 until we switched to 3.6 recently. Its IApplication runs via PlatformUI.createAndRunWorkbench(...). The WorkbenchAdvisor we pass to that function overridescreateWorkbenchWindowAdvisor(...) to return a WorkbenchWindowAdvisor whose createActionBarAdvisor(...) returns an ActionBarAdvisor.

This ActionBarAdvisor‘s makeActions(...) creates and register()s a bunch of org.eclipse.jface.action.Actions, many of which do things like setAccelerator(SWT.CTRL | 'O'); in their constructors. The Actions are subsequently installed in the ActionBarAdvisor‘s fillMenuBar(...) and fillCoolBar(...) methods.

The problem we are having (now that we are on Eclipse RCP 3.6) is that these accelerators don’t seem to be active until their menus are shown (even if no action is taken besides closing the menu again).

We see a relevant bug but are having some difficulty understanding how to apply its remedy to our situation. We recognize that instead of Actions we “ought” to be using commands, handlers, and key bindings. But we’re hoping we don’t have to go down that path just yet.

How can we make our accelerators “live” as soon as the application starts up?

Answer 1

After hunting around and experimenting a bit trying to apply the advice from the bug, we added the following to our WorkbenchWindowAdvisor, which seems to have done the trick:

@Override
public void postWindowCreate() {
    getWindowConfigurer().getActionBarConfigurer().getMenuManager().updateAll(true);
}

We have no idea how well this fits with the Workbench’s design expectations; there could be a better way.