Speeding up the editing cycle of PDE compilation-debugging

Question

Are there any low-power fruits of a relatively more efficient way to run and test Eclipse plugins (inside the PDE)? In addition, we are done with the Eclipse configuration that has already been completed.

Answer 1

I usually minimize my startup configuration (not sure if this is what you are doing). Here is how I do it:

• Create a new launch configuration
• Go to the Plugins tab.
• Select "Run with:" → "Plug-ins only"
• Click "Unselect All"
• Select only plug-ins that you are debugging from your workspace.
• Optional: you can uncheck the box "Include additional dependencies ..."
• Click "Add Required Plugins"
• Save the configuration and run

Now this may not work on the first shot. This probably means that you have a problem with certain dependencies. This is also a good test for this. Fix it, restart, and it should work much smoother.

Answer 2

I am using Launch As: Eclipse Application and I do not find it too bad. I found that changing the plugin.xml file (or the .xml fragment) always requires you to exit and respawn to pick up the changes, but Java change does not always happen, since the changes can often be hot-swappable (PDE is good to warn you when it can not.)

Answer 3

I would like if Eclipse could dynamically insert my plug-ins into the current environment - it can do this with regular plugins. As for speeding up the editing-compilation-debugging cycle, I usually work out my work in small SWT / Swing applications before integrating them into the full product, but this may not work in many cases.