Category Archives: Technology

Help Icon on Dialog Pages

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Another item I struggled with … adding the help icon to various dialogs (wizards, preferences, properties, about box, etc).

In almost all Eclipse dialogs … there is a question mark icon in the lower left hand corner. You click on this and it invokes the context sensitive help.

The problem was, I couldn’t figure out how to activate this.

I thought it would be controlled by some plug-in or product setting, but I couldn’t determine where.

After a fair bit of digging & debugging of base Eclipse, I determined that this feature is turned on globally for the entire application:

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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.

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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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.

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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eBooks Readers

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I just finished the 12th book in Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series … Changes.

The book was quite good … very intense … and a shocker of an ending.

I thought this was the last book of the series … but I’ve read somewhere else that there are eight more books planned for the series.

I got hooked on the Dresden series when SciFi (currently known as SyFy) was showing the Dresden TV series.   I was quite disappointed to see the series end.   It had a lot of potential, in my opinion.

One significant thing about this book was not the book itself … but how I read the book.   I purchased it as an eBook from the Apple bookstore and read it on my iPhone.

I have to say … I was surprised how easy reading the book on my iPhone was.

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Where Did “All Users” Go?

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Recently I was having a problem getting some software installed on my laptop running Windows 7.

The software (IBM’s Rational Developer for Power Systems) has a custom installer.   When I tried to run the installer, it was complaining about some internal version number.   Problem was, I couldn’t find any trace of the installer or it’s data.

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