Program debug and launch support
The resources plug-in in the Eclipse platform allows you to manage a set of
source files for a program and compile them using an incremental project
builder. Plug-ins can define new builders that handle special resource
types, such as source files for a particular programming language. Once an
executable program is built with your plug-in's builder, how can you make sure
that it gets invoked correctly?
The
org.eclipse.debug.core
plug-in provides the API that allows a program to define a configuration
for launching a program. The program can be launched in different modes. For
example, it could be launched for regular execution, for debugging, for profiling,
or any other mode defined by your plug-in. The
Eclipse Java development tooling (JDT) uses the platform debug support to launch
Java VM's and the Java debugger.
The
org.eclipse.debug.ui
plug-in includes support for user configuration of
launch parameters and utility classes that ease the implementation of powerful debuggers.
There are some shared concepts in launching and debugging programs that are
implemented in the platform debug support. However, the best way to
understand how to use the platform debug support is to study a robust concrete
implementation of launching and debugging, such as the JDT launching and debug
tools. We'll review the major concepts of the platform debug support in the context
of the JDT concrete implementation.
