Overview

1. Compatibility
2. Building
3. Running
4. To Do

Contents

Compatibility
This plugin has been tested on the Eclipse 3.0 platform on Linux, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. If you have success on any other versions/platforms please let us know by emailing 'chezjesus at users.sourceforge.net'.
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Building
This plugin depends on classes in the following external packages:
• org.eclipse.core.boot
• org.eclipse.core.resources
• org.eclipse.core.runtime
• org.eclipse.ui
To work with the source within Eclipse you can import these into your workspace.
Directions for importing needed projects/packages into an Eclipse 3.0 workspace:
1. Click on File>Import
2. Select External Plug-ins and Fragments
3. Click Next
4. You should now be in the "Import External Plug-ins and Fragments" wizard, the defaults on this page should be sufficient.
5. Click Next
6. Select the following plug-ins/fragments (use the CTRL-Click):
   1. org.eclipse.core.boot
   2. org.eclipse.core.resources
   3. org.eclipse.core.runtime
   4. org.eclipse.ui packages
7. Click Add
8. Click Finish
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Running
1. To run the client, unpack the distribution file into your $ECLIPSE_HOME/plugins directory. When you launch Eclipse the Dog icon should show up on your toolbar and you will have a "Doggone" page in your workspace preferences. You need to edit these preferences for the Dog to work. They should be self explanatory.
2. Start a server somewhere.
   1. The server code is in the same file as the client code.
   2. You can start the server via the following command:

              java -cp $ECLIPSE_HOME/net.sf.doggone/doggone.jar DogServer
      

      The default server will run on localhost at port 9988.
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To Do
1. Remove references to deprecated methods and types
   1. IPluginDescriptor has been deprecated: if we remove this in favor of Bundle and Platform we will not be backwards compatible to the start of the 3.0 branch.
   2. The constructor AbstractUIPlugin(IPluginDescriptor) because of the deprecation of IPluginDescriptor.
   3. AbstractUIPlugin.startup() is deprecated.
   4. Plugin.getDescriptor() is deprecated.
2. Refactor Server/Client interaction
   1. Currently, the server pings the client for a response every so often to confirm that the client is still there. If not the server will release the Dog or change its ownership to the next in line after the timeout period (2 minutes currently).
   2. This should be changed to the client doing push operations on the server. The timeout mechanism will then also need to change.
3. Improve error messages
   1. The most notable situation is when there is no DogServer running, in which case you get a very unuseful error that the client had trouble talking to the server.
4. Add more documentation
   1. The client should be self-explanatory, but we need documentation explaining where to go within Eclipse to set things up.
   2. The server needs documentation -- there is currently none.
   3. Inevitably users will want to make this a service of some sort, so we should add scripts for *nix and Windows that will do this (Mac as well?). As this will cause bloat in the distribution perhaps we can just add documentation for how to do it.
5. Create the website and add documentation there.
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