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What are the differences? What gets used for which purpose?
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Plugins are the smallest deployable and installable software components of Eclipse. Each plugin can define extension-points which define possibilities for functionality contributions (code and non-code) by other plugins. Non-code functionality contributions can, for example, provide help content.
The Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) is a generic Java platform for running applications. It provides the basic blocks for building a rich client application GUI using the OSGi framework. Eclipse RCP is an SWT base for building GUI applications. Eclipse plug-ins extend the functionality of the Eclipse IDE.
The purpose of a product is to define application-specific branding on top of a configuration of Eclipse plug-ins. Minimally, a product defines the ID of the application it is associated with and provides a name, description, and unique ID of its own.
A plug-in, like an object, is an encapsulation of behavior and/or data that interacts with other plug-ins to form a running program. A better question in the context of Eclipse is, What isn’t a plug-in? A single Java source file, Main. java, is not part of a plug-in.
As the RCP tutorial details
Plugins are the smallest deployable and installable software components of Eclipse.
Each plugin can define extension-points which define possibilities for functionality contributions (code and non-code) by other plugins. Non-code functionality contributions can, for example, provide help content.
The basis for this architecture is the runtime environment Equinox of Eclipse which is the reference implementation of OSGI. See OSGi development - Tutorial for details.
The Plugin concept of Eclipse is the same as the bundle concept of OSGI. Generally speaking a OSGI bundle equals a Plugin and vice-versa.
The Feature Tutorial mentions
A feature project is basically a list of plugins and other features which can be understood as a logical separate unit.
Eclipse uses feature projects for the updates manager and for the build process. You can also supply a software license with a feature
Finally, a product is a stand-alone program built with the Eclipse platform. A product may optionally be packaged and delivered as one or more features, which are simply groupings of plug-ins that are managed as a single entity by the Eclipse update mechanisms.
So:
plugins can be grouped into features which can be packaged as one executable unit called product.
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