Removing popUpMenus from CNF (Common Navigator Framework) in Eclipse

Question

I have been partially successful at removing almost all the popUp menus from the Commons Navigator Framework simply by configuring the plugin.xml file.
There are 2 menus that refuse to go:

• group.edit and
• group.reorganize.

My plugin.xml config looks like this:

<extension
          point="org.eclipse.ui.navigator.viewer">
       <viewer
             viewerId="org.eclipse.ui.example.navigator.view">
             <popupMenu allowsPlatformContributions="false">
                <insertionPoint
                    name="group.edit" />

                <insertionPoint
                    name="group.reorganize" />
             </popupMenu>
       </viewer>
       <viewerContentBinding
             viewerId="org.eclipse.ui.thermo.navigator.view">
          <includes>
             <contentExtension
                   pattern="org.eclipse.ui.navigator.resourceContent"/>
          </includes>
       </viewerContentBinding> 
</extension>

Setting the allowsPlatformContribution to false DOES stop contributions to be added to the context menu except for group.edit and group.reorganize... this is starting to look like a bug to me.

The obvious solution is to remove the insertion points from my <popUpMenu> but without them the application throws an exception:

Throwable: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Group not found: group.edit

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Group not found: group.edit
at org.eclipse.jface.action.ContributionManager.addToGroup(ContributionManager.java:131)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.ContributionManager.appendToGroup(ContributionManager.java:138)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.navigator.resources.actions.EditActionGroup.fillContextMenu(EditActionGroup.java:74)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.navigator.resources.actions.EditActionProvider.fillContextMenu(EditActionProvider.java:50)
at org.eclipse.ui.navigator.NavigatorActionService.addCommonActionProviderMenu(NavigatorActionService.java:205)
at org.eclipse.ui.navigator.NavigatorActionService.fillContextMenu(NavigatorActionService.java:172)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.navigator.CommonNavigatorManager.fillContextMenu(CommonNavigatorManager.java:258)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.navigator.CommonNavigatorManager$4.menuAboutToShow(CommonNavigatorManager.java:273)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.MenuManager.fireAboutToShow(MenuManager.java:335)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.MenuManager.handleAboutToShow(MenuManager.java:463)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.MenuManager.access$1(MenuManager.java:459)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.MenuManager$2.menuShown(MenuManager.java:485)

It throws the same exception for the reorganize group.

Answer 1

I succeeded in removing the "group.edit" actions (Copy/Paste) and I've done it that way, using the Common Navigator extension points :

   <extension
         point="org.eclipse.ui.navigator.viewer">
      <viewerActionBinding
            viewerId="org.eclipse.ui.navigator.ProjectExplorer">
         <includes>
            <actionExtension
                  pattern="my.app.client.actions.MyAppEditActionExtension">
            </actionExtension>
         </includes>
      </viewerActionBinding>    
   </extension>
   <extension
         point="org.eclipse.ui.navigator.navigatorContent">
      <actionProvider
            class="my.app.client.workshop.MyPasteActionProvider"
            id="my.app.client.actions.MyAppEditActionExtension"
            overrides="org.eclipse.ui.navigator.resources.actions.EditActions"
            priority="highest">
         <enablement>
         <!-- A hack to allways be enabled -->
         <not>
            <systemTest
                  property="MyApp"
                  value="WONT-EVER-BE-SET">
            </systemTest>
         </not>
         </enablement>
     </actionProvider>
   </extension>

And, with addition of "org.eclipse.ui.navigator.resources" in my plugin dependencies, I implemented "MyPasteActionProvider" like this :

import org.eclipse.jface.action.IContributionItem;
import org.eclipse.jface.action.IMenuManager;
import org.eclipse.ui.internal.navigator.resources.actions.EditActionProvider;

/**
 * Create the Edit actions (Cut/Copy/Paste) 
 * and register then globally in the workbench using EditActionProvider.
 * <p/>
 * Then, removes the Copy/Paste contributions in the pop-up menu.
 */
public class MyPasteActionProvider extends EditActionProvider {
   public void fillContextMenu(IMenuManager menu) { super.fillContextMenu(menu);
   // remove Copy/Paste contributions
   IContributionItem copyItemRemoved = menu.remove("org.eclipse.ui.CopyAction");
   IContributionItem pasteItemRemoved = menu.remove("org.eclipse.ui.PasteAction");
   }
}

Well, that's a "discouraged access" but I was getting myself discouraged ;-) JM.D

Answer 2

Generally you should be using the Command Framework with any recent version of Eclipse (3.3 or higher), this replaces the mechanism for providing popup menus in the Common Navigator.

Answer 3

This thread suggests to remove the things that are causing the menu items to appear in the first place:

They are probably in action sets, so if you can identify the action set that's causing the offensive contribution, you can do something like this in your WorkbenchAdvisor:

    ActionSetRegistry reg = WorkbenchPlugin.getDefault()
            .getActionSetRegistry();


    IActionSetDescriptor[] actionSets = reg.getActionSets();
    String[] removeActionSets = new String[] {
        "org.eclipse.ui.cheatsheets.actionSet",
        "org.eclipse.ui.edit.text.actionSet.annotationNavigation",
       "org.eclipse.ui.edit.text.actionSet.convertLineDelimitersTo",
          "org.eclipse.ui.WorkingSetActionSet",
        "org.eclipse.update.ui.softwareUpdates", };


    for (int i = 0; i < actionSets.length; i++)
    {
        boolean found = false;
        for (int j = 0; j < removeActionSets.length; j++)
        {
            if (removeActionSets[j].equals(actionSets[i].getId()))
                found = true;
        }


        if (!found)
            continue;
        IExtension ext = actionSets[i].getConfigurationElement()
                .getDeclaringExtension();
        reg.removeExtension(ext, new Object[] { actionSets[i] });
    }

The closest bug I have found is the 145233: Make more obvious way to specify input (for RCP apps), with a similar hack.
Bug 143430 (CommonNavigator requires initialInput to be Adaptable) is a more general one, and would indicate that then CNF has been improved with eclipse3.5 (Galileo).
So do you also have this issue with 3.5 and a custom CNF class?

---

As mentioned in the article "Eclipse CNF: Navigator Content Extensions", CNF has evolved with eclipse3.5, and this article seems to have some tree with true custom contextual menu entries.