How do I begin using an Eclipse plug-in after downloading it from the Eclipse marketplace?

Question

In this case, the plug-in is Zest. I have downloaded "Eclipse for java developers(Juno)". I understand it has something to do with manifest.mf dependencies. But I have no idea what they are. I am new to Eclipse and Java programming. The Zest tutorial mentions Eclipse for RCP development. Can it not be used in other versions?

Answer 1

There are two kinds of plug-ins downloadable from the Eclipse Marketplace: plug-ins that contribute new functionality to Eclipse, and plug-ins that provide a programmable framework. Zest is one of the latter.

To use such a framework (similar to other Java libraries), you have to have a Java project that has the corresponding jars (and their dependencies as well!) on their classpath.

The simplest way to achieve this is to create a plug-in project in Eclipse, and add the Zest jars as a direct dependency and also adds SWT and possibly JFace as indirect dependencies). In that case, you can use the Zest API in your project and create the corresponding graph visualizations.

In case of Zest, it is also possible to create a simple Java project (unrelated to Eclipse), as the code base does not use any Eclipse-specific functionality, on the other hand, it depends on SWT and JFace, so you have to add the corresponding dependencies as well. For details, see the wiki entry of JFace to get an idea how to manage it. If you want to use Zest, follow the same steps, but also copy the Zest and Draw2d jars as well.

I hope, this solution is clear enough - if not, feel free to ask further questions.