Make Contribution to UI in New Plugin Wizard must be completed

[opcoach]

When we are doing a pure UI E4 plugin we should not have a dependency to org.eclipse.ui anymore but only on JFace.

Nevertheless the wizard is now ambiguous because to do a pure E4 UI Plugin we should say : Make contribution to UI -> NO and then add the dependency to jface manually... Not really handy.

The wizard should be changed like this :

Make Contribution to UI : Yes/NO. -> Then if Yes we should be able to select :

• Pure E4 UI Plugin
• Hybrid E3/E4 Plugin
• Legacy E3 UI plugin. (Legacy is important to say -> don't do that anymore)

[laeubi]

@opcoach see also

• Adding SWT + JFace when creating a plugin that "makes contribution to the UI" #1306

[opcoach]

Here are the expectations depending on the choices :

UI choice	Minimum dependencies to be added	templates to be proposed
Legacy E3 UI plugin	org.eclipse.ui, org.eclipse.core.runtime	templates using 3.x API
Hybrid E3-E4 UI plugin	org.eclipse.ui, org.eclipsecore.runtime	templates using 3.x API and 4.X API
Pure E4 UI Plugin	org.eclipse.jface, org.eclipse.swt, org.eclipse.core.runtime	templates using 4.X API

If the 'Make a Eclipse RCP application' is chosen, the template list will differ by filtering the possible templates

Templates will create either UI extensions or UI model fragments.

[laeubi]

I think we should not name it "pure E4" (just RCP 4.x), "Hybrid" is actually E4 Compatibility Layer and "legacy E3" should simply be RCP 3.x ... the term legacy would mean you can do everything with E4 what is not the case and even Eclipse IDE itself heavily uses E3.

[opcoach]

Yes Good idea for RCP 3.x, RCP 4.x.
For E4 Compatibility Layer the name is too long and a RCP 3.x is also running using the compatibility layer. WDYT of RCP 3 or 4.x ?

[laeubi]

I think aktuelly a "pure E3" is not really possible anymore and you need E4 anyways ... so maybe only Mention E4 and have an option to use E3 comaptibilty?

[ejDeister]

Hey @opcoach @laeubi, I was wondering if I could get some feedback. I come from a team of four from CodeDay. We recently just got our PR accepted for issue #1306, and we want to tackle this issue next. Could you confirm my summary of the requirements for your issue?

1. When the user creates a new Plug-in project, the wizard will only display the "This plug-in makes contributions to the UI" checkbox. Until...
2. When the user selects said checkbox, three radio buttons appear:
   | UI Choice | Default base dependencies | Possible template selection |
   |-----------------------|----------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------|
   | RCP 3.x | org.eclipse.core.runtime, org.eclipse.ui | Any template using 3.x API |
   | E4 Compatibility Layer| org.eclipse.core.runtime, org.eclipse.ui | Any template using 3.x or 4.x API |
   | RCP 4.x | org.eclipse.core.runtime, org.eclipse.swt, org.eclipse.jface | Any template using 4.x API |
   Now, I now there was some more development in the last two comments on this thread, and that's what I was hoping to clear up. Are you guys hoping to have E4 assumed by default and a checkbox for E3 compatibility? e.g. "This plug-in makes contributions to the UI" -> Include org.eclipse.core.runtime, org.eclipse.swt, org.eclipse.jface -> "This plug-in will have E3 compatibility" -> Include org.eclipse.ui

Edit: Tried to get the table to render, but to no avail :/

[vogella]

I think the solution in #1472 is good additional UI options are IMHO not so helpful and feel like "too much" to me. Any opinion here @HannesWell?

[HannesWell]

I think the solution in #1472 is good additional UI options are IMHO not so helpful and feel like "too much" to me. Any opinion here @HannesWell?

I agree that extending the UI is probably too much. The UI is already not simple and adding more elements increases the complexity.

But we want to have this, we could add corresponding templates and also explain the difference in the template description. Additionally the existing templates should then be revised if we an existing template already covers one of the cases or could be changed to cover one case with only little adjustments.

[vogella]

Adding more templates for the different use cases is a great suggestion