GSoC 2007: Equator Reached!

The midterm evaluation is complete and just over a month is left to do the project, and the deadline is approaching fast.

The last post about the facade implementation for each extension was just a concept showing what could be done for mapping the extension method calls to the script. But implementing a dedicated facade for each extension is not feasible just because there is an unlimited number of the extension types available.

As the previous post said, a proxy class solution could solve the problem so that I shouldn't write a dedicated facade for each extension. That said, we have a brand new solution in place: the ScriptExtensionProxy class, which implements the following interfaces:

1. IExecutableExtension required for extension initial setup in ConfigurationElement#createExecutableExtension() calling IExecutableExtension#setInitializationData()


2. IExecutableExtensionFactory required for proxy class construction using IExecutableExtensionFactory#create() call in ConfigurationElement#createExecutableExtension()


3. InvocationHandler required to delegate the extension method calls to the script in InvocationHandler#invoke() method.

The example script still works the same way as previously, but no facade class required any more.

The declaration of an extension is changed a little bit, as I have to define a proxy class, an extension interface class and a script file in the class attribute in plugin.xml:

<action class="org.eclipse.soc.yummy.core.ScriptExtensionProxy: \
   org.eclipse.ui.IWorkbenchWindowActionDelegate/action.groovy"
               icon="icons/sample.gif"
               id="ScriptAction"
               label="&Sample Action"
               menubarPath="sampleMenu/sampleGroup"
               toolbarPath="sampleGroup"
               tooltip="Hello, Eclipse world">
         </action>

It looks a little messy though...

Overall, providing the scripting support for developing plug-ins in Groovy requires only three classes at the moment: a proxy, a script execution engine, and a helper class for initialization code that is actually used in the proxy class only. LOC = 355.


Next, I will have to make many examples to see what is missing in ScriptExecutor and to find out which workbench objects should I expose to the script. I still need to refer to Dash for this purpose.