Chopped off arm, body is healthy

Yep, it was a very, very hard decision.
Today i finalized the removal of Common Navigator from Designer.
Probably one of the toughest decision I had to make so far.
CNF is an awesome framework but the lack of good documentation makes it quite a task to use it.
I got everything to work, with one exception:
Non objectContribution contributed actions.
Getting your actions to show up in the CNF popup based on the selected object(s) is a piece of cake.
Everything else is a completely different story.
I followed the instructions on digital paper napkin up to that point of adding stuff using action providers.
And there it failed. I dodn't know what I did wrong, I got the demo sourcecode, got the same exception: "Incorrect number of expressions: enablement in navigator extension: null in plugin"
A quick googling showed me that some other people hit that problem but no answers so far.
That did it and for now we will live without CNF.
I still hope to get it back in some time but right now we are back to old fashioned RCP.

Leg, Arm, Head

What would you be willing to lose?
I am sitting here, after weeks of coding with the CommonNavigator framework in eclipse, just to realize that I might have to completely remove it or lose the last tiny shard of sanity left in my head.
Yes, CommonNavigator is awesome, somewhat.
The absolute absence of debugging help in it is just frustrating.
Not knowing what is wrong with your XMl and not getting any help from eclipse is rather frustrating.
By googling a little you will discover pretty soon that I am not the only person who is unable to get actions to show in the places you actually want em to show up.
By now I think I got a pretty good grasp on eclipse and the dreaded toolBar/menuBar-paths.
I even understand how the objectContributions work.
But the vieweContribution stuff is a complete mystery to me.
Seems like as if I will have to read some source code to figure out what I am doing wrong.
Would it really be that hard to provide some help in the logfiles for that?
What about adding just some lines that tell me where actions end up.
Or *ghasp* what about giving me a warning if I declare an invalid path?
So right now I have to come to a decision:
Keep CommonNavigator and all the nice goodies OR
cut it out and do it in a clean RCP-App.
And my frustration will probably lead to the latter one.

Restart

Ok, it took a while and I am the king of procrastination.
But now all my excuses are gone.
Got my diploma, got rid of a lot old burdens and started with a lot new things.
I am still working for Pramari, LLC and I intend to use this as my developer blog for my current projects.
Right now I am working in three areas of coding:

• Eclipse: the good stuff (CommonNavigator, yeah)
• OpenGL: mostly jMonekEngine
• Android: just for fun

Eclipse and OpenGL I currently use for RiFiDi-Designer which I am working on full time with my team for Pramari, LLC.


The voice job in the video is done by Prasith, the manager of Pramari.

How to get a navigator view in RCP

I am struggling with the Common Navigator Framework right now.
After finding a good tutorial on CNF I started hacking away.
The problem was that I needed a navigator view to actually do something with my fancy new CNF.
Creating the view is only half the deal and after some google research I finally found the part that was missing:

In your perspective add the Navigator View

IFolderLayout topLeft= layout.createFolder("topLeft",IPageLayout.LEFT,
0.25f,layout.getEditorArea());
topLeft.addView(IPageLayout.ID_RES_NAV);

And now for the part that I was missing.
In your WorkbenchAdvisor (normally called ApplicationWorkbenchAdvisor if you used the PlugIn wizard) overwrite the preStartup method and add the following line:

WorkbenchAdapterBuilder.registerAdapters();

Uh, I almost forgot about the dependencies:
org.eclipse.ui.navigator
org.eclipse.ui.navigator.resources
org.eclipse.ui.ide
org.eclipse.ui.navigator

First post

I finally did it.
My first blog.


Err, yep, enough applause.
This blog will basically cover my daily work as a software developer.
I want to provide, hopefully, useful information on java and eclipse RCP.
I realized, after fighting for the 10000000 time with some eclipse issues I had solved a year ago, that it would be great to keep track of these things and probably help some people who might stumble upon the same issues.
About myself:
I am a software developer currently working for Pramari, LLC.
We are developing java based open source software (for those who want to know: we are working on a RFID simulation environment called RiFiDi).
I am currently developing a 3d simulation that incorporates jMonkey and eclipse.
And another side note:
I am German, so English is not my native languag, I am a fluent speaker but when it comes to written language I might have some weaknesses. If you find misspellings or grammar problems feel free to send me a note.
Thanks
Codepitbull