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The goal of the Eclipse Scout project is making it easy to build distributed enterprise applications based on the Eclipse platform. It consists of a runtime framework providing transparent service communication between the client and backend part and is shipped with a rich set of common user interface components. The user interface is not built for a particular rendering technology but it encapsulates the core functionality into a headless model. GUI factories are available for rendering the client model into a particular target UI platform. SWT and Swing are supported out of the box and an AJAX GUI factory could be easily added. Developing Scout applications is supported by the Scout SDK, a plug-in set built on top of Eclipse PDE and Eclipse JDT. The Scout SDK works directly on the bare Java resources and assists the development task by providing an augmented view on the underlying Java code. Additionally, it comes with a rich set of wizards and operations for modifying the Scout application project just by editing the underlying Java code. There is no meta-data required. Hence a developer can switch between editing resources using Eclipse's standard editors and leveraging the features of Scout SDK at any point in time. Eclipse Scout can be used to create multi-tier client/server applications, standalone client applications or OSGi-based server applications. Basically, there are three main advantages when choosing Scout as your framework for building such applications. First, the Scout runtime is service oriented by design. Almost every functionality is provided as an OSGi service. Every OSGi bundle may make use of them. Second, Scout provides a rich set of UI elements being uncoupled from a particular GUI technology. And third, building distributed client/server applications is as easy as if both parts would run within the same local JVM.

Recently I decided to get up to speed on at least one rich client platform for a project we had. Over the years I had come across references to Eclipses RCP and Netbeans RCP so I started with those two.

As Eclipse plug-in and Rich Client Platform developers, we face unique challenges in how we structure and execute our unit tests. In this article, I suggest an approach to unit testing based on Eclipse fragments that can help us overcome these challenges. If you find yourself frustrated with your current plug-in testing options, read on! But before going into detail on a fragment based solution, let's examine the current approaches and the pros and cons associated with each. The first approach is the one most of us start with as we learn the ropes of plug-in development: placing all code in a single plug-in.

Tutorial for Eclipse RCP

Introduction tutorial for Eclipse RCP