Duration: 27:05

107 views

2

EclipseCon France 2018
https://www.eclipsecon.org/france2018/session/extending-and-customizing-eclipse-using-javascript

Speaker(s):
Mattias Mohlin (HCL Technologies)
Elena Strabykina (HCL Technologies)

Adoption of Eclipse based development tools in large organizations usually requires several adaptations and customizations to meet the needs of specific user groups. Traditionally this is accomplished by having a group of "expert users" in the organization develop specific Java plugins for customizing and extending the functionality of the tool. However, this approach can lead to significant complexity and a high maintenance burden, especially if multiple versions of the software are in use at the same time in different parts of the organization.

With Java 8 the JVM now has excellent support for JavaScript, and it hence becomes possible to develop extensions for Eclipse using JavaScript instead. Extending Eclipse using JavaScript has some benefits given by the dynamic nature of the language. But of course it also means challenges in other areas.

In this talk you will learn about how a large organization uses JavaScript for customizing and extending an Eclipse based modeling tool used for development of C++ applications. The specific problem this organization faces is to build multiple versions of their applications from the same set of source models and code. Specific versions may be needed for reasons such as target platform differences and use of various instrumentation and profiling tools.

JavaScript is used in order to extend the user interface for building the models into C++ code. It is also used for implementing the build of different application variants. The approach helps end users maintain simplicity in models and build settings, and also avoids the risk to arrive at inconsistent build results.