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Eclipse Rich Client Platform

Designing, Coding, and Packaging Java Applications

Top Problems Getting Started
  1. Ensure that you install the RCP SDK and not the RCP Binary. The RCP SDK has the source code and all the extension point schema files needed to develop RCP plug-ins. A symptom of this problem occurs when you try and add a view to Hyperbola and the view extension point cannot be found.
  2. Going from Chapter 4 to Chapter 5 samples the launch configuration are re-used between sample code iterations which results in re-using the same workspace between iterations. A common symptom is that the perspective in Chapter 5 shows as empty. To avoid problems caused by stale workspace data between iterations, open your launch configuration and click on the "clear workspace" checkbox in the "Main" tab. That should do the trick.
  3. On page 58 section 4.3.2, we introduce the -consoleLog command line argument and recommend that it can be used to make exceptions appear in the console when debugging your application. In fact, we recommend that you always set this command line argument when running the sample code in the book.
Errata

Page 15 - Figure 2-2, "Perspecives" should be "Perspectives".
Page 65 - It isn't clear how to get the icons at this point. Later on page 69 it talks about using copy into workspace. It could be made clearer.
Page 74 - Mentions the AdapterFactory class when it should be the HyperbolaAdapterFactory class.
Page 75 - When adding the Platform class ther are two choices in the pop-up if you use the Ctrl-Shift-O shortcut, be sure that you use the org.eclipse.core.runtime.Platform rather than the org.eclpse.swt.internal.Platform.
Page 89, Section 6.1.3 - AddContactAction, run method refers to d.getNameText(), while the method name in the Sample source code AddContactDialog is getUserId().