Chapter 3Eclipse Infrastructure
This chapter discusses the architecture behind the code generated in the previous chapter. Before diving deeper into every aspect of the program, it’s time to step back and look at Eclipse as a whole.
The simple example plug-in that was started and described in Chapter 2—the Favorites plug-in—provides a concrete basis on which to discuss the Eclipse architecture.
3.1 Structural Overview
Eclipse isn’t a single monolithic program, but rather a small kernel containing a plug-in loader surrounded by hundreds (and potentially thousands) of plug-ins (see Figure 3-1). This small kernel is an implementation of the OSGi R4 specification and provides the environment in which plug-ins execute. Each plug-in ...
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