Platform and Equinox API

Platform Changes
Git migration During this release cycle, the Eclipse and Equinox projects migrated their source control systems to Git. The new Git repositories are now available for developers to clone or fork:
Flexible viewer refactored The code driving the debug views (Debug, Variables and Breakpoints) has been substantially refactored to improve its overall quality, stability and performance.

Some of the more notable changes include:
  • There is a 30% improvement in the overall performance of the views
  • Two new interfaces have been added to the provisional API: IModelProxyFactory2 and ITreeModelViewer
  • The Copy and Find actions have been re-written to work better with the virtual views
  • A new viewer filter extension has been added to TreeModelViewerFilter, mitigating scrollbar presentation issues
The complete list of changes can be found here.
RelaunchLastAction has been made API The internal class RelaunchLastAction has been promoted to API and can be found in the org.eclipse.debug.ui.actions package.
Add new expression image constant has been made API The constant IDebugUIConstants.IMG_OBJ_ADD_NEW_EXPRESSION has been added to API to allow consumers who extend or use the Expressions view look-and-feel to use the Add New Expression icon (The add new expression icon).
Toggle breakpoints target manager has been made API The interface org.eclipse.debug.ui.actions.IToggleBreakpointsTargetManager has been made API to allow clients access to known IToggleBreakpointTargets. The new API can be accessed via org.eclipse.debug.ui.DebugUITools#getToggleBreakpointsTargetManager()
BreakpointTypesContribution has been made API The class org.eclipse.debug.ui.actions.BreakpointTypesContribution has been added to API. This class can be reused by clients to add a breakpoint type action in the editor gutter context menu to match the action(s) that appear in the Run > Breakpoint Types menu.
Find action can be customised in Variables View specialisations Consumer now have the ability to completely override the behaviour of the Find... action in the Variables View and any of its sub-classes, e.g. Expressions View, Modules View, etc.

To replace the default Find... actions clients must provide an adapter for the interface org.eclipse.debug.internal.ui.viewers.model.provisional.IViewActionProvider.

For more information see the Javadoc for org.eclipse.debug.internal.ui.viewers.model.provisional.IViewActionProvider with an example available in the org.eclipse.debug.examples.ui bundle found in the Platform Debug Git repo.

Equinox Changes
New OSGi console This release includes a brand new OSGi console based on the Apache Felix Gogo project. In previous releases the Equinox framework contained a built-in OSGi console. This console allows you to interact with the OSGi framework and execute commands on the running instance of the framework. For example, it can be used to install bundles or to get a list of currently installed bundles. The built-in console is convenient because it is always available without needing to install extra bundles, but it is also limited because the framework itself must contain all the functionality of the built-in console.

The Apache Felix Gogo project has developed an advanced shell for interacting with OSGi frameworks. Instead of continually enhancing the built-in Equinox Framework console, a new external Equinox Console bundle has been created that uses the Apache Felix Gogo bundles. The new Equinox Console bundle continues to provide support for the Equinox Console APIs (package org.eclipse.osgi.framework.console). It also adds many new enhancements which are possible through the use of the Gogo shell. This includes features such as tab completion, command history, piping, grep, telnet and ssh connections, and more. Type help on the console to see a list of available commands, or help <command-name> for information on how to use each command.

Update to Jetty 8 and Servlet 3.0 The Equinox HTTP service implementation is now using Jetty 8 as the web container to support Servlet 3.0 and JSP 2.2. The Equinox HTTP service is required to host the Eclipse user assistence web context for serving up help content.

For the Juno release, Equinox will no longer support the use of older Jetty implementations and we are no longer shipping Jetty 6. The Equinox HTTP service implementation will no longer work with the Servlet 2.5 and JSP 2.1 APIs. Also note that the Jasper and expresson language implementation bundles have changed in order to support the Servlet 3.0 and JSP 2.2 specifications. The following bundles have been removed:

  • org.apache.jasper
  • org.apache.commons.el
  • org.mortbay.jetty.server
  • org.mortbay.jetty.util
These have been replaced with the following to support Servlet 3.0 and JSP 2.2:
  • org.eclipse.jetty.continuation
  • org.eclipse.jetty.http
  • org.eclipse.jetty.io
  • org.eclipse.jetty.security
  • org.eclipse.jetty.server
  • org.eclipse.jetty.servlet
  • org.eclipse.jetty.util
  • javax.el
  • org.apache.jasper.glassfish
  • com.sun.el
Customize storage for preference scopes When defining your own preference scope, you can now extend a simple storage customization class rather than implementing all the preference logic yourself. In this class you simply define the code to read and write a preference node to whatever backing store you want to use. This makes it very easy to define a custom preference scope with alternate storage requirements. For more details see the documentation for the org.eclipse.equinox.preferences.preferences extension point, or the new API class org.eclipse.core.runtime.preferences.AbstractPreferenceStorage.
OSGi Core Release 5 With this release the Equinox OSGi Framework implements the draft OSGi Core Release 5 (R5) specification. The OSGi Core R5 specification is an incremental change from the R4.3 specification. A majority of the changes included in the Core R5 specification are in support of the upcoming OSGi Enterprise Release 5 specification. A public draft of the specification will be available here by March 26, 2012. The final version will be available here shortly after that.
Publisher Support for Negation Requirements The p2 publisher can now publish negation requirements. A negation requirement is a requirement that must not be present. For example, the Rich Ajax Platform (RAP) can declare a negation requirement on the Eclipse Platform, meaning that RAP won't be installable into your IDE.
Negation requirements are specified using the p2.inf file. Details are available on the Wiki

SWT Changes
Highlight TrayItem Image You can now provide a custom image for use as the hightlight image for a tray item on Cocoa. The highlight image is shown when the tray item is activated. The default tray item image will be restored when the tray item is deactivated.

Default Tray Item
Default Tray Item

Highlighted Tray Item
Highlighted Tray Item
Added support in StyledText to show the scrollbars only when needed In the past, when a StyledText was created with scrollbars it would show them all the time, even when the client area was big enough to show the entire content. By using setAlwaysShowScrollBars() this behaviour can now be configured so that instead of showing a disabled scrollbar, the StyledText will only display the scrollbar when needed.
Event type constants in StyledText are now public The following event type constants in StyledText have been made public:
  • ExtendedModify
  • LineGetBackground
  • LineGetStyle
  • TextChanging
  • TextSet
  • VerifyKey
  • TextChanged
  • LineGetSegments
  • PaintObject
  • WordNext
  • WordPrevious
  • CaretMoved
This allows these constants to be used with Widget#isListening() to verify if a listener handler was added for any event type in StyledText.
Default Browser renderer is now configurable The native renderer that is used for SWT.NONE-style browsers can now be configured by setting a Java property. This is particularly important for applications that create browsers with a specific native renderer style (eg.- SWT.MOZILLA), in order to avoid conflicts that can occur when multiple native renderers are loaded in the same process.

For more information on using this new property see How do I specify the default type of native renderer that is used by the Browser? .
FontDialog Effects New API has been added to FontDialog to prevent the user from selecting font effects, such as color, underline, strikethrough and shadow.

FontDialog on Windows without the Effects grouping
New Combo API Two new APIs have been added to Combo that allow users to get the caret information in a combo box. Combo.getCaretLocation returns the pixel coordinates of the caret. Combo.getCaretPosition returns the character position of the caret.

For an example of how to use this API see Snippet 359.

Tree Cursor The new TreeCursor class can be used to enable users to navigate a Tree control's individual cells, similar to what TableCursor makes possible for Table controls. For an example of using TreeCursor see Snippet360.

Tree Cursor
XULRunner 10 The SWT browser now supports embedding XULRunner 10.0.x (note that XULRunner versions 4.x - 9.x are not supported). Apps wishing to use this must ship a XULRunner 10 runtime and explicitly point at it as described in the FAQ .
Provide context menu trigger MenuDetectEvent now fills in the event detail field to indicate whether the context menu is being triggered by the SWT.MENU_MOUSE or SWT.MENU_KEYBOARD. If the event.detail is SWT.MENU_KEYBOARD, custom controls can appropriately position the context menu based on current focus or selection.
Set/get custom colors in ColorDialog ColorDialog now supports getRGBs() and setRGBs(RGB []) to allow applications to retrieve, save, and restore any custom colors that the user selected in the dialog.

Custom Colors section of a win32 ColorDialog
BIDI segments on text widget The Text widget now supports adding SegmentListener for BIDI support. This allows BIDI ordering to be applied to segments of the text instead of the entire text.
Browser Function Access BrowserFunction can now be installed into specific frames.
SWT Runtime introspection SWT.isLoadable() can be used to determine whether the SWT implementation can be loaded in the current running environment.
Overlay scrollbars Scrollable.getScrollbarsMode() can be used to determine whether the platform shows overlay scrollbars.

Previous     Next