The Eclipse platform is delivered with a full featured Java integrated development environment (IDE). Java development tooling (JDT) allows users to write, compile, test, debug, and edit programs written in the Java programming language.
The JDT makes use of many of the platform extension points and frameworks described in the Platform Plug-in Developer Guide.
This guide discusses the extension points and API provided by the JDT. We assume that you already understand the concepts of plug-ins, extension points, workspace resources, and the workbench UI.
We first look at how the JDT tools are structured. It's easiest to think of the JDT as a set of plug-ins that add Java specific behavior to the generic platform resource model and contribute Java specific views, editors, and actions to the workbench.
Then we will look at how to use the JDT API to accomplish common tasks, such as generating, compiling, and running Java code programmatically.