Why GEF ? At what point of time i have to use GEF [closed]

Question

As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.

Closed 7 years ago.

Am in the start process of devloping an eclipse plugin for workflow drawing. now i have to understand the architure of eclipse plugin.I would like to know about difference/relationship between GEF ,EMF and GMF what is the latest tech to go as of now? where can i get the materials for the understanding ?

Answer 1

1. EMF - the Eclipse Modeling Framework - provides you with tools to help you create your model. The basic idea is that you define a domain model using ecore, and with this model you can then generate a lot of code for this model: java classes for each entity in the domain, with getters/setters, listening capabilities and lots of other goodies.
2. GEF - the Graphical Editing Framework - is a framework written for creating visual editors in eclipse using the MVC pattern. It is built on top of draw2d, which is a "lightweight" drawing framework on top of SWT. GEF does not require the use of EMF as its model, and you can use any model you like, but since EMF generates the code that you normally require to do MVC, it is very useful.
3. GMF - the Graphical Modeling Framework - is a framework built on top of both EMF and GEF. Basically, you create both a model of your domain and a model of your view and GMF generates all of the code of the editor.

I have worked for the past year with GEF and EMF have great results. For a couple of weeks I tried working with GMF but was unable to understand how things work there - the learning curve is very steep. I wrote a set of tutorials on GEF, and invite you to check them out.