Eclipse RCP vs Eclipse PDE

Question

What is difference between a eclipse plugin environment and eclipse rcp plugin?

I am confussed that when you launch any eclipse plugin as eclipse application , it is nothing but you are running a rcp application.

Please help me in correcting both the context.

Answer 1

PDE is the plugin development environment, which you use to write new plugins for other Eclipse users. It is part of the Eclipse standard IDE.

When those new plugins are deployed to a user afterwards, then he is running an RCP application. That RCP application typically contains way less plugins, and typically does not contain the PDE anymore.