# Plug-in Development Environment Overview

The Plug-in Development Environment (PDE) provides tools to create, develop, test, debug, build and deploy Eclipse plug-ins, fragments, features, update sites and RCP products.

PDE also provides comprehensive OSGi tooling, which makes it an ideal environment for component programming, not just Eclipse plug-in development.

PDE is broken into three main components:

- UI - A rich set of models, tools and editors to develop plug-ins and OSGi bundles
- API Tools - Tooling to assist API documentation and maintenance
- Build - Ant based tools and scripts to automate build processes

Discover the latest features in the What's New section.

## PDE UI

PDE UI provides a editors, wizards, launchers, views and other tools to create a full featured environment to develop and deploy Eclipse plug-ins, fragments, features, update sites, RCP products and OSGi bundles.

Some of the PDE tools include:

- Form-Based Manifest Editors: Multi-page editors that centrally manage all manifest files of a plug-in or feature.
- RCP Tools: Wizards and a form-based editor that allow you to define, brand, test and export products to multiple platforms.
- New Project Creation Wizards: Create a new plug-in, fragment, feature, feature patch and update sites.
- Import Wizards: Import plug-ins and features from the file system.
- Export Wizards: Wizards that build, package and export plug-ins, fragments and products with a single click.
- Launchers: Test and debug Eclipse applications and OSGi bundles.
- Views: PDE provides views that help plug-in developers inspect different aspects of their development environment.
- Miscellaneous Tools: Wizards to externalize and clean up manifest files.
- Conversion Tools: Wizard to convert a plain Java project or plain JARs into a plug-in project.
- Integration with JDT: Plug-in manifest files participate in Java search and refactoring.

To get started, try out the following cheat sheets:

- Creating an Eclipse Plug-in
- Creating a Rich Client Application

## API Tools

API Tools assists in the documentation and maintenance of APIs provided by plug-ins and OSGi bundles.

Some of the features include:

- Compatibility Analysis : Identify binary compatibility issues relative to a previous version of a plug-in.
- API Restriction Tags : Javadoc tags are provided to explicitly define restrictions associated with types and members.
- Version Number Validation : Identify invalid plug-in version numbers relative to a previous version of a plug-in.
- Javadoc `@since` Tag Validation : Identify missing and invalid `@since` tags on types and members.
- API Leak Analysis : Identify API types and methods that leak non-API types.
- Quick Fixes : Quick fixes are provided to adjust plug-in versions and @since tags appropriately.

To get started, see the tasks:

- Setting up API Tools
- Setting up a baseline
- Changing options
- Creating filters
- Removing filters

## PDE Build

PDE Build facilitates the automation of plug-in build processes. PDE Build produces Ant scripts based on development-time information provided by, for example, the plugin.xml and build.properties files. The generated Ant scripts, can fetch the relevant projects from a CVS repository, build jars, Javadoc, source zips, put everything together in a format ready to ship and send it out to a remote location (e.g., a local network or a downloads server).

To get started, see the following:

- Automated building of RCP applications from product configurations
- Automated building of features
- Automated building of plug-ins
- Generating Ant scripts from PDE
- Generating Ant scripts from scripts
- Building p2 repositories and products.
- Builder Configuration Properties
- Feature and Plug-in build properties