[ecf-dev] Thoughts about ECF connection ui

[Scott Lewis <slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks,

I'm contemplating creating a new extension point for the ECF ui plugin 
called "org.eclipse.ecf.ui.connectConfigurationWizards".  This extension 
point would allow provider plugins (or other plugins) to define wizards 
UIs for collecting information necessary to call

IContainer.connect(ID,IConnectContext)

The extension would be required to provide an implementation class for 
this new interface:

package:  org.eclipse.ecf.ui.IConnectWizard

public interface IConnectWizard extends IWizard {

    public void init(IWorkbench workbench, IContainer containerToConnect);

}

Then, in a new ECF connect dialog it would be possible to select the 
desired provider, and get extensions in registry implementing this 
extension point (for matching types/provider names of IContainers).  
When found, the above init method would be called with the 
selected/created container instance, and the implementation would define 
wizard pages, appropriate input widgets, get appropriate info (for ID 
construction) from UI and call the IContainer.connect method (and 
handle/display errors, etc).

What do people think about this approach?  Any comments?  It would allow 
us/others to decouple the connect UI from the provider implementation, 
although it *could* be defined by the provider as well (if the provider 
needs/wants to have a particular connect dialog that collects certain 
information from user for making a connection).  We could have the 
existing ECF connect dialog as a default, so that if a given provider 
can/wants to use that (where the resulting params for connect are a 
String or URI...for ID...and a String password).

In some ways, this is intended to be similar to the Team UI extension 
point org.eclipse.team.ui.configurationWizards...which are used to 
collect configuration information (e.g. hostname, username, port, 
password, protocol, etc) for connection to team providers (like CVS).

One other thought/question that I had:

Should IConnectWizard instead be IConnectWizardPage (extending IWizardPage)?

Let me know what you think.

Scott