|Eclipse Corner Article|
This is a draft document.
The Eclipse Platform is based on the notion of plug-ins. Plug-ins are a simple but powerful mechanism that allow developers and users to construct complex tool sets by composing functionality (i.e., plug-ins). There are of course a number of subtleties in how plug-ins are defined and how they interact. This article attempts to demystify plug-ins and make it easier to create and manage Eclipse Platform configurations.
By Jeff McAffer, IBM OTI Labs
January 27, 2004
This document is a direction statement for the Eclipse runtime based on an extended R3.0 OSGi framework specification. While most of the function and API described here is included in Eclipse 3.0, it is not officially supported. Rather, Eclipse 3.0's official runtime API is largely unchanged from Eclipse 2.1. Subsequent releases of Eclipse will codify the new behaviour described here. Early adopters and other interested parties are free to exploit the new capabilities but should be aware that some API may change over time.
This document makes no attempt to relate "new world" runtime concepts/mechanisms to classic mechanisms. This is left to a companion migration guide document.
Throughout this document we use the terms plug-in and bundle interchangeably unless we are refering to the actual Plugin or Bundle classes. Just as in Eclipse 2.1, some plug-ins/bundles may specify extensions or extension points and some may not.
Note: The manifest markup and code fragments in this document are preliminary and subject to change prior to the final release of Eclipse 3.0
One of the main design points of the Eclipse Platform is that it is extremely extensible. Another is that it is uniform. The Eclipse plug-in model is key in satisfying both of these goals. A plug-in is a piece of functionality which can be added to the runtime. Tools and applications are constructed by creating one or more plug-ins. How tools or applications are factored into plug-ins depends on the nature of the tool or application.
Eclipse itself, for example, is made up entirely of plug-ins: some 50 or so in all. Even the runtime which manages plug-ins, is itself a plug-in! Plug-ins interact via well defined API's. Since everything is a plug-in and plug-ins interact via public interfaces, all plug-ins are equal in the system. There are no plug-ins which get special treatment or privileges. For example, the Workbench UI is a plug-in which presents the resource model defined by the Resources plug-in. Since the Workbench accesses the Resources plug-in only via API, all other plug-ins have exactly the same opportunities for manipulating resources.
It follows from this, that capabilities are added to the Platform incrementally, by adding plug-ins. Each new plug-in ties into the API of existing plug-ins and provides new functionality. Still other plug-ins then build on the API of these new plug-ins to add still more functionality to the Platform. And so on...
Another design point that makes Eclipse extremely extensible is its policy of laziness. Only those plug-ins with code that is actually being used are activated. Lazy activation is key to supporting a large base of installed plug-ins, only some of which are needed in any given user session. Until a plug-in's code is loaded, it has a negligible memory footprint and impact on start up time.
Eclipse plug-ins and OSGi bundles are synonymous and we use the
terms interchangeably. Fundamentally, plug-ins are a collection of files either
in a JAR file or a directory. In both cases they have the same internal structure.
The plug-in JAR or directory can be in the local filesystem or located/accessed
via a URL. The identity and execution characteristics of a plug-in are defined
by a manifest file called
This is a standard Java JAR manifest file in the standard location within the
plug-in's file structure. An example of plug-in com.example.foo.jar's
manifest is shown below.
<XXX example here>
The JAR or directory contains anything else the plug-in might need. Typically this includes Java code, some read-only files, and resources such as images, web templates, message catalogs, native code libraries, translation files, etc. Most, though not all, plug-ins contribute executable code. Documentation plug-ins, for example, contribute online help in the form of HTML pages registered with the help system. If a plug-in does contain code it must either be written in Java or be callable from Java.
The above plug-in manifest example is for a very simple plug-in which provides no code. Below we highlight some commonly used facilities for specifying plug-in interdependencies as well as code content. The complete details of manifest.mf headers are given in the OSGi framework specification.
Plug-ins which supply code must declare the location of the code on their classpath. This is done using the Bundle-Classpath manifest header. It is specified as a comma-separated list of entries where each entry is a path to the Java types or resources which are to be loaded by a classloader. That is,
Bundle-Classpath ::= path ( , path )* path ::= <path name of nested JAR file or directory with "/"-separated components> | .
The path specified is evaluated relative to the plug-in's root and cannot resolve to a location outside the scope of the plug-in (for example, "../../foo.jar" is not allowed). In practice the entries take one of three forms:
If the Bundle-Classpath header is omitted, the bundle classpath implicitly includes '.'. If the header is included and does not include '.', the root directory of the plug-in is not searched when looking for classes or resources. The classpath specification below puts all classes/resources in foo.jar as well as anything in the images directory on the classpath, in that order:
Bundle-Classpath: foo.jar, images
Note that while all combinations of classpath forms and running from JARs are supported by the runtime, nested JARs and package directory structures not at the root of a JAR both represent major deviations from the conventional Java tooling support (e.g., javac does not support these structures). Accordingly, the Eclipse tooling (e.g., PDE, JDT, Update/Install) may not fully support these configurations.
The advanced section of this document outlines how to specify filters on classpath entries to control their use in various execution environments.
There are two complementary ways of depending on something from outside a given plug-in; Require-Bundle and Import-Package. Using the Require-Bundle manifest header, plug-ins specify an explicit dependency on a specific bundle and version. As such, the required bundles are placed logically on the dependent plug-in's classpath. More discussion on this can be found in the exectuion section below. For now it is sufficient to say that if you need code or resources from a particular plug-in then you should specify a Require-Bundle header as follows:
Require-Bundle ::= bundle (, bundle)* bundle ::= version [; match = constraint] constraint ::= perfect | equivalent | compatible | greaterequal
If a plug-in A requires plug-in B, plug-in B is said to be
a prerequisite of plug-in A. Continuing our example, the manifest below shows
the manifest.mf expressing a dependency on
In this example,
com.example.myplugin (My Plugin) can access any
of the classes in packages listed in the Provide-Package header of
The Provide-Package header allows a plug-in to declare what parts of itself it is willing to expose to those who depend on it using the Require-Bundle mechansim. The form of a Provide-Package header is as follows:
Provide-Package ::= package (, package)* package ::= conventional Java package name
Notice that the elements of the Require-Bundle header are qualified by a version
number and matching rule. Versions refine the dependencies between plugins and
help the runtime choose between different installations of the same plug-in.
In general the runtime picks the most recent version which matches given the
matching rule. Eclipse version numbers are a four part string of the form
Versions are compared using one of four matching rules.
Plug-in dependencies are transitive. That is, if Another Plugin requires some plug-in, say Final Plugin, then My Plugin is not resolved unless both Another Plugin and Final Plugin are present and resolved. This is easy to see since Another Plugin is disabled if its prerequisites are not met (e.g., Final Plugin is not present). Similarly, My Plugin is also disabled if its prerequisite, Another Plugin, is not present. Circular dependencies are not permitted and any plug-in involved in a cycle is disabled at runtime.
<XXX need picture here>
Class visibility through the dependency chain is not transitive unless explicitly stated. That is, My Plugin cannot see the classes in Final Plugin unless Another Plugin explicitly re-exports its import of Final Plugin. This effectively encapsulates the implementation of Another Plugin. Where transitivity is required, the provide-packages attribute of a Require-Bundle element is used to re-export the packages provided by the required plug-ins. (try saying that a few times quickly!). For example,
Finally, plug-in prerequisite elements can be made optional by adding theRequire-Bundle: org.eclipse.swt; provide-packages="true"
optional="true"attribute (see below for an example). Marking an import as
optionalsimply states that if the specified plug-in is not found at runtime, the dependent plug-in should be left enabled. This is used when a plug-in can be used in many scenarios or it is reasonable to operate with reduced function. It allows the creation of minimal installs that cover functional subsets. Authors of plug-ins using optional prerequisites should take special care to avoid or handle the ClassNotFoundExceptions which will occur when the optional plug-in is not present.
Require-Bundle: org.eclipse.swt; optional="true"
The other mechanism for specifying dependencies on other bundles is expressed through the Import-Package and Export-Package headers.
<XXX expand this section with info from OSGi spec>
Extension points are a mechanism used by plug-ins to indicate they are willing to accept contributions from other plug-ins. An extension is a plug-in's way of contributing information to these extension points. For example, a UI plug-in might expose an extension point for menu actions. A plug-in wishing to contribute an action to the UI would define an extension for the UI's menu action extension point.
Extension points have a globally unique id constructed from the defining plug-in
id and a simple id specified in the extension point itself. The example below
is from the
org.eclipse.ui plug-in. The full identifier of the
extension point is therefore
org.eclipse.ui.actionSets. All extension
points have this relatively simple form.
<extension-point name="Action Sets" id="actionSets"/>
The exact form of extensions is defined by the plug-in which defines the extension point being extended. In the above example, the UI plug-in specifies what information is needed to define the menu action as well as the form of that information. For example, the UI needs a class it can instantiate and run when the menu entry is selected. The type characteristics (e.g., superclass, interfaces) of the class are also defined by the extension point itself. Such an extension is called an executable extension.
Extensions and extension points are declared using XML in a file called plugin.xml in the root of defining plug-in's file structure. This file has at top level tag of <plugin> which has no attributes. The snippet below shows an example extension and extension point in a plugin.xml file.
<plugin> <extension point="org.eclipse.ui.actionSets"> <actionSet label="Example" visible="false" id="com.example.actions"> <action id="com.example.action1" class="com.example.CoolAction" icon="icons/action1.gif" helpContextId="action1_context" label="Action1" </action> </actionSet> </extension> <extension-point id="foo" name="An Example"/> </plugin>
A plug-in can define any number of extension points and extensions. Further, any given extension point may be extended by any number of extensions (including 0). Extensions can extend extension points defined in their own plug-in or in others. It follows, therefore, that extension points can accept extensions from their own plug-in or other plug-ins.
Extending an extension point does not imply a dependency relationship. Rather,
it is a statement that if there is an extension point with the given id (point
attribute in the
extension tag), add the given
extension. Otherwise, do nothing.
Fragments allow optional functionality/content to be added to existing plug-ins. For example, the base Eclipse contains only English messages. Fragments are used to add message catalogs containing other languages (e.g., French, Italian) without modifying the existing plug-ins. Note that fragments can only add function/content to plug-ins. They cannot override that which the plug-in already contains. Fragments are added to their host plug-ins in the order in which the fragments were installed in the system. Fragments for missing plug-ins are ignored.
It is not surprising to find that fragments are very similar to plug-ins; they are defined using the same manifest files and the same directory structure. They differ in the use of an additional header, Host-Bundle which identifies the bundles (id, version and matching rule) which can host the given fragment. Since this specification can match several bundles in a given configruation, fragments may be bound to several host bundles at a time. Of course, any given plug-in can have any number of fragments associated with it.
Fragments can contribute libraries, prerequisites, extension points or extensions using standard syntax. These contributions are seamlessly merged into the fragment's host plug-in(s). That is, extensions and extension points from a fragment appear to come from/be part of (respectively) the base plug-in, libraries are put on the base plug-in's classpath and prerequisites contribute to the plug-in's prerequisite chain.
Below, is an example of a simple NL fragment for
Bundle-Name: Example Add-on 1 Fragment Bundle-Version: 2.0.2 Bundle-GlobalName: com.example.myplugin.addon1 Host-Bundle: com.example.myplugin; version=2.0.0; match=compatible Bundle-Classpath: nl1.jar
This fragment contributes additional jars which contain translations of the messages used by the plug-in itself. In this case the jar contains files named according to the standard Java locale-based lookup strategy (e.g., message_en_US.properties, message_jp_JP.properties). Since the jars are added to the plug-in's classpath, the plug-in classloader will find these resources automatically.
All of the information we have discussed so far has dealt with physical plug-in information stored in the Eclipse environment. We will now talk about the runtime version of all this plug-in information. That is, how these declarative structures are loaded, represented and used when the runtime is active.
The Eclipse runtime has two main elements; the OSGi framework and the Eclipse runtime proper. The framework manages the set of bundles installed, their interdependencies as well as all details of classloading and lifecycle. The runtime on the other hand supports a registry of extensions and extension points as well as various utility classes and mechanisms.
Libraries define the local classpath of a plug-in. Each library entry translates
into an entry on the classpath of the plug-in's classloader. Earlier we discussed
the concept of a
code vs. a
library. Resource libraries are loaded by a resource loader and do not figure
into the strict classloading model.
Classloading in Eclipse follows the P-S-P model. That is, Parent-Self-Prerequisites.
org.eclipse.core.runtime). All plug-ins automatically have the Eclipse runtime plug-in (
org.eclipse.core.runtime) added to their prerequisite list as the first prerequisite. All imports of the runtime plug-in are ignored.
Note that prerequisite consultation is transitive. When locating a class, a prerequisite plug-in will follow the same (though optimized) P-S-P model. Since all plug-in classloaders have the same parent, prerequisite loaders need not look there. Similarly, plug-ins which occur repeatedly in the transitive closure of the prerequisite graph are consulted at most once. Finally, prerequisite re-exporting rules are followed as described above.
The Eclipse Platform makes certain assumptions about the physical structure
of a plug-in. Each plug-in or fragment is typically stored in a separate directory
under a directory named
plugins under your Eclipse
install directory. The name of this directory is usually the same as the plug-in's
id (though it may have the version number appended to it). In addition to the
there may be any number of folders under the plug-in's root folder.
Since Eclipse can be run on a wide range of machine configurations (i.e., operating system, window system) it needs a way of managing different forms of the same data (e.g., shared libraries). Eclipse provides four variables for use in library statements which resolve to parts of the current machine configuration.
So, for example, if your plug-in uses windowing system-specific features, it
may be necessary to provide a different library for each configuration. Using
$ws$/<library name> in your plug-in
manifest file directs Eclipse to look for the library in a window system directory
with the same name as the current window system. The
plug-in uses this mechanism as follows:
<runtime> <library name="$ws$/swt.jar"> <export name="*"/> </library> </runtime>
The SWT plug-in has a series of directories of the form
Each of these directories contains a different version of
If you are working in an Eclipse environment in a win32 windowing system, the
$ws$/swt.jar will match
Note that in practice any given Eclipse install will have only one
(the one that matches the install). The jars are actually contributed by window
system-specific fragments. This allows the common part of a plug-in to be put
in the plug-in and have only the window system code in a fragment.
When Eclipse starts up, only those plug-ins needed to build the plug-in registry and get things started are activated. All other plug-ins (the vast majority of plug-ins) remain dormant. When something happens causing the code within a plug-in to be loaded, that particular plug-in is activated. That is, classloading is the only trigger for plug-in activation. Plug-ins are only activated if the class loaded comes from the plug-in's local classpath (i.e., one of its libraries). Loading classes from a prerequisite does not count. This is the basis for Eclipse's lazy plug-in activation policy.
Many things can happen without activating a plug-in. In particular,
Once a plug-in is activated it remains active until Eclipse shuts down. When Eclipse does shut down, all plug-ins are shut down in a dependents-first order. For example, if plug-in A requires plug-in B, then plug-in A will be shut down before plug-in B.
As plug-ins and fragments are added to the framework and RESOLVED bundle events
are broadcast, the Eclipse runtime looks for plugin.xml files in the
root of the plug-in's file structure. If one is found, it is used to build the
extension registry. Each discovered file is parsed by the runtime which
then validates the declared extension and extension point entries (all #REQUIRED
fields must be present) and the entries to the registry. Invalid entries are
skipped and noted in the platform's log (typically under the
directory). As entries are added to the registry they are crosslinked with existing
entries. The resulting extension registry is available via the
Any new crosslinking between extensions and extension points are reported to interested parties via IRegistryChangedEvents. Plug-ins can register extension change listeners (IExtensionChangeListener) with the runtime using
IRegistryChangeListener listener = new IRegistryChangeListener() ...; Platform.getExtensionRegistry().addRegistryChangeListener(listener);
Listeners receive change events which detail the changes in the set of extensions present in a particular extension point. These events do not detail the addition or removal of extensions or extension points independent of linkage activity. Parties interested in monitoring this level of activity should register a BundleListener with the framework and listen for BundleEvent.RESOLVED and BundleEvent.UNRESOLVED events. When notified of such an event, the listener can query the extension registry to discover the extensions and extension points related to the changed bundle.
<XXX how to be dynamic>
This article has set the stage for plug-ins: defining what they are, why they are important and concepts related to them. The appendices give a more formal definition of the XML used to define plug-ins, fragments, extension points, etc. A companion article, "How Does the Platform Tick?" builds on the concepts discussed here and gives a more detailed look into how plug-ins work.
The following appendices are included for easy reference and are up-to-date as of the time of the writing of this document. The Platform Plug-in Developers Guide contains the most up-to-date versions of these documents for each Eclipse release.
Each classpath element can be refined using a set of filters which are evaluated at runtime to determine if the entry is applicable to the current execution environment. The filters are specified using the LDAP filtering syntax with multiple filters separated by semi-colons.
Bundle-Classpath: runonunix.jar; selection-filter = "(osname=unix)", runoneverythingelse.jar; selection-filter = "(!(osname=unix))"
<?xml encoding="US-ASCII"?> <!ELEMENT plugin (extension-point*, extension*)> <!ELEMENT extension-point EMPTY> <!ATTLIST extension-point name CDATA #REQUIRED id CDATA #REQUIRED schema CDATA #IMPLIED > <!ELEMENT extension ANY> <!ATTLIST extension point CDATA #REQUIRED name CDATA #IMPLIED id CDATA #IMPLIED >