Author Archives: David

Removing P2 from RCP

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Recently I was struggling with a problem having to do with the headless build of my RCP application.

For some reason the P2 update function was being included in the build application, even though I never specified it as a requirement for the feature or plug-in.

The result was, when the user clicked on the Installation Details button on the applications about box, the tabs for “Installed Software” and “Installation History” were shown … but they were both empty.

After a lot of web searching I was unable to find a way to exclude the P2 feature & plug-in’s from my application.

My suspicion is that one of the other plug-in’s or feature’s that I’m using has p2 as a requirement.

End Of The World

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As posted to Friendly Atheist …

The fans of Family Radio Inc., a Christian radio network, have sponsored dozens of different billboards in select cities around the country proclaiming the exact date when Jesus is coming back.

May 21st, 2011.

You know, just like the Bible predicted.

If they’re so sure that it’s going to happen on that date will they leave regardless of if it happens or not?

I’d pay real money if they would.

Thanks to Ginny for the link.

Icons for RCP

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When building an Eclipse RCP product, you have the ability to generate a native executable.  By default the icon associated with the executable is the Eclipse graphic.

There’s an option in the product definition (‘.product’ file) that lets you use your own icons.

There are two ways to attach the icons …

  • Six different BMP files – 16×16, 32×32, & 48×48 at 32 bit & 8 bit depths.
  • A single ICO file with all six graphics included.

I was struggling with creating the graphic files I needed.  I had no problem getting the 32 bit version of the files created, but couldn’t figure out how to create the 8 bit version.

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Freedom of Speech

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I’m in a bit of a quandary.

I’m a big freedom of speech advocate … I think that everyone is entitled to their opinion and to voice that opinion in the appropriate forums.

Enter Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church.

There is a case currently in front of the Supreme Court where the family of a fallen Marine sued Phelps for “intentional infliction of emotional distress”.

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Including a JRE in a headless build

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There appears to be a known issue in the headless build facility that results in a built RCP product not having a JRE (even though the product configuration indicates there should be one).

If you do an export from the Eclipse UI, you do get the JRE included.

After a fair amount of digging I figured out how to resolve this problem.

First … you need to have your product based on features.

Next, modify your features build.properties file to include the following line …

root.win32.win32.x86.folder.jre=absolute:${java.home}/

This will cause the generated build script for the feature to copy the JRE that is executing the compile into the jre directory of the product.

Obviously this entry is specific to Windows 32bit compiles.

Export RPC — File In Use

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I was trying to use Eclipse 3.6 to manually export a RPC using on a Win7 x64 system but kept getting the following error:

C:\Users\myuserid\workspace\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.pde.core\temp\org.eclipse.pde.container.feature\build.xml:103: Failed to copy C:\eclipse\configuration\org.eclipse.equinox.app\.manager\.tmp31587.instance to c:\test-app\eclipse\win32.win32.x86\eclipse\jre\configuration\org.eclipse.equinox.app\.manager\.tmp31587.instance due to The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file

The file .tmp31587.instance was indeed locked … apparently by the eclipse instance that I was currently using.

So it appeared that the export function was trying to copy a file from the live Eclipse instance.

My solution was to move the configuration directory for the live eclipse instance to my personal home directory.

The eclipse product was installed in C:\eclipse … so I copied “C:\eclipse\configuration” to “C:\User\myuserid\eclipse\configuration” and then changed the shortcut I use to launch eclipse to include the parameter “-configuration C:\Users\myuserid\eclipse\configuration”.

Now, when I launch eclipse, and export the RPC … it doesn’t try to copy a file that’s in use, since the configuration is no longer in the eclipse application directory.

New Blog

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I’m in the process of building a new application at work … this is a thick client application that is using the Eclipse RCP framework.

This blog is going to be a place where I stash notes, tips & tricks, and complaints about the Eclipse framework.

Drainage

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For many years we’ve had a serious drainage problem in our back yard …. every time it rained, we would get a big puddle in the back yard that would stick around for at least a week.  The picture to the left is the back yard 3 or 4 days after a heavy rain.

At one point, Ginny was thinking about having a rain garden put in the back corner, but I wasn’t a big fan of that idea.  We ended up dropping the idea because it would have taken a fair amount of maintenance.

In addition, our sump pump outlet was really close to the house and was not at all protected from freezing.  More than once the sump pump pipe would freeze in the winter, after we had a thaw, and the pump would get close to burning out because it couldn’t pump water.  Luckily I’ve always been home when this has happened … so I was able to remove the frozen section of PVC pipe and have it just dump out on to the lawn.

(If you haven’t noticed, we’ve had our fair share of water related house problems)

For years I kept saying I was going to get these two problems resolved.  Well, I finally got off my butt and had it taken care of.

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AT&T Microcell

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We’ve never had good cell phone coverage at home … even when we had Verizon service.

The coverage with AT&T is even worse … but, we do like the iPhones.

I was pretty interested when AT&T announced they were rolling out 3G Microcell devices.

Basically, a Microcell is a tiny 3G cell site. It provides 3G service to up to 10 authorized cell phones. The 3G service is provided using VoIP like service (if not exactly VoIP). The range is about 40 feet in all directions.

The Microcell has a built in GPS unit so that it can verify it’s in the correct location … for E911 service and, I assume, so the AT&T systems can tell which cell towers to hand the call off to when you leave the devices range.

Setting up the device wasn’t hard … although it took quite a long time to activate. The instructions indicated that it could take up to 90 minutes, but ours took about 3 hours.

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