Finding execution context information about an Eclipse plug-in

Question

I am using the Reflections library in the Eclipse plug-in I am currently developing. Apparently everything is fine when the plug-in is deployed as a bundle in Eclipse (ie, its jar is dropped in the plugins folder of Eclipse), but when the plug-in is executed during development (Run As/Eclipse Application), I need to add to the search paths of the Reflections library the output folder (eg, 'bin') from the project where the plug-in was executed.

Then my question is if there a way to know, at plug-in activation time, the following: - if the plugin has been deployed as a bundle, or if it has been executed in the context of another Eclipse instance - the output directory of the project from where the plugin was launched (in case of the plug-in being executed from another Eclipse instance). So I could add that output directory to the Reflections library.

This is rather more a hack than an ideal solution, but it is the only workaround that has occurred to me until now to make Reflections work properly, given that I do not want to hardcode the output folder of my development project in the code. (if someone knows how I could use Reflections without having to set the output folder when in developing mode, that would be highly appreciated also).

Answer 1

You might have to investigate how PDE works with JDT to create a runtime eclipse. I know when it launches an eclipse from a workspace, it sets a -dev option that includes extra bin/ classpaths. It might set some flags or properties as well.

See PDE Guide .