Using Eclipse EMF/Ecore models inside the Eclipse Platform is quite easy. Loading an XML/XMI serialized model file is only a matter of some lines of code. The most interesting thing about this is that the whole Eclipse platform can handle the registration of models and model factories for you. So instead of knowing what model type you are loading, it will be detected and the right model factory will be used for loading and creating your model instance. Even better is the fact that also derived model objects can be loaded that way.

It seems that migrating from Eclipse RCP 3.x to E4 (Eclipse 4.x) is not a quick win. If you already have an RCP based application the switch to E4 turns out to be a real problem. As is the E4 way if you want some sort of “custom” application that features some IDE components (like a perspective switcher or about dialog). It seems a bit strange that the migration from 3 to 4 is such a bumpy ride. Although there a are lots of tutorials, they mostly only scratch the surface of the task to convert a full-blown RCP application. But this should be a rant on E4, I hope that the next releases improve that situation a lot.

If you are running Mint, Eclipse and you like the Mint-X theme, you might be a bit frustrated every time you open up Eclipse. Especially with Eclipse 4.2 the design of the toolbars is pretty messed up. See the launchpad bug entry: https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1168281

Today I stumbled over an issue that was unsolved in my workspace for some days now. Finally I got the time to fix it. I have a ECore meta-model which consists of three sub-packages and has no class in the main package. Generating model, edit and editor for this I had a nice start for my task. Then I wanted to generate code from this meta model and ran into a strange problem. On the console I simply got the following message when I tried to launch the Acceleo UI generator action:

The type of the first parameter of the main template named 'generateElement' is a proxy.

The mission: “save some bucks by using a free PBX using a cheap isdn card”. Don’t try! Buy something working in the first place. But if you have to, here is one example how it can be done. There are, for sure, many others!