I would like to use the Eclipse plugin framework to deploy pure Java
applications. I work on a set of closely related pure Java applications,
both non-GUI (standalone and MBeans) and Swing-based GUI (with WebStart and
InstallAnywhere installers), that I would like to build as a collection of
components. Since I really like the Eclipse plugin architecture, I would
like to use it as my component architecture. However, I do not want to use
any non-Java Eclipse code, SWT, or the main eclipse.exe.
Has anybody done this?
Are there any dependencies in the base plugin framework on native platform
code, e.g., org.eclipse.core.resources.*, that would make it impossible to
reuse the implementation of the framework in a pure Java context?
In order to ship an application using WebStart, all content must be in jars.
I understand that putting plugin.properties and plugin.xml into a jar and
breaking the directory structure, e.g., a single directory containing all
jars requires some change to the plugin framework. Are there any fundamental
issues with the current implementation that would make these changes very
difficult?