The ultimate goal of this plugin is to provide eXo platform application developers with a rich set of tools such as wizards, editors, and views that integrates with the Eclipse platform. This should leverage the existing capability of the Eclipse platform and its JDT tooling while providing specialized tools within Eclipse to help the eXo platform developers community.
The first release of the plugin targets a certain set of eXo platform developers, more specifically, the portlet developers. Building on our experience with developing the Pluto Plugin, we identify a simple development cycle that most of the portlet developers follow. It starts with first using a wizard to create a Java web application that contains one or more portlets. Next, you write the source code using the Eclipse Java editor. Then, you package and deploy the web application using the Deploy Portlets action provided by the eXo platform plugin. You then start the eXo platform portal and test your portlet. Finally, you go back to the source code for further editing and the whole cycle (except the project creation step) is repeated until the portlet functionality is completed.
Here are some screenshots of the most popular functionnalities :
You can validate your portlet.xml and see the errors as markers. You have the choice of automatically validating portlet.xml and/or performing validation manually by choosing the Validate Portlet Deployment Descriptor option from the popup menu.
Decoration of Portlet Projects. You can easily identify a portlet project, its web-folder, its context root, and the JSR 168 version used by its portlet deployment descriptor.
Automatically modify web.xml to include the correct context root value.