 | Level: Intermediate Peter Nehrer (pnehrer@ecliptical.ca), Freelance Writer, Consultant
02 May 2006 Although most users think of Eclipse as an integrated development environment for building Java™ technology applications, it is really something much more basic. Eclipse is a framework for building plug-ins, allowing you to extend its functionality to solve nearly any problem -- just by leveraging a set of APIs and readily available libraries. In this four-part "Create an Eclipse game plug-in" tutorial series, you will solve a pressing problem most programmers encounter daily: how to break away to play a quick video game without switching applications and making it obvious. You'll develop a simple game that will read the bugs entered on the a view and blast them to bits. The game will run inside Eclipse as a plug-in, that will demonstrate how to write to the Eclipse API, while using the Standard Widget Toolkit, the Open Graphics Library, and the Lightweight Java Games Library. Part 4 demonstrates how to build and test the plug-in using an automated process, and finally, package it for distribution.
In this tutorial
In this tutorial, we take everything developed thus far, test it, and prepare it for distribution. Specifically, we will: - Create JUnit test cases for unit-testing the plug-in.
- Create an Eclipse feature project to manage packaging of the plug-in.
- Develop an automated build and test process using headless build support provided by the Plug-in Development Environment (PDE).
Prerequisites
This tutorial assumes you have basic knowledge of Java syntax and coding; Eclipse plug-in programming, as shown in Part 1 of this series; unit-testing with JUnit; and Apache Ant scripts. Graphics programming knowledge is a plus, but not required. Knowledge of OpenGL is not required.
System requirements
The following tools are needed to follow along:
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Eclipse
- Eclipse is the framework for creating the plug-in created in Part 1. Now we'll continue leveraging Eclipse in building the gaming plug-in. Download Eclipse SDK 3.2 M3 or later.
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Eclipse SWT
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SWT is the Eclipse widgets package for window making, donated to Eclipse by IBM. Download SWT 3.2 M3 or later.
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Eclipse OpenGL
- You need the OpenGL libraries for creating shapes and more. Download the experimental org.eclipse.opengl binding, version 0.5 for SWT 3.2 for your system.
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Eclipse Example Plug-in using OpenGL
- Download the Example plug-in with a view that uses OpenGL. You'll use the source code in this plug-in as a framework for building your own custom OpenGL scene.
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Java technology
- Eclipse and all its plug-ins need Java technology. Download Java from Sun Microsystems or IBM.
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Eclipse Test Framework
- This package provides support for automated testing of plug-ins. It is available from Eclipse.org as an add-on to the Eclipse SDK.
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Info-ZIP
- This utility is used by the automated build script on platforms that do not have a native zip/unzip command. Download it from Info-ZIP.
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