Java Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 9.4
Eclipse PDE offers a nice manifest editor. As well as a source view, there are tabs for con-
trolling package imports, exports, and what's packaged into a built bundle.
PDE
uses the target platform to automatically validate package imports, and it can also
do more advanced validation and visualization of a bundle's dependencies. We men-
tioned earlier that accumulating dead layers of unused dependencies in your mani-
fests is one of the hazards of manifest-first development. Eclipse
PDE
addresses this
problem by providing an option to search for unused dependencies; sadly the detec-
tion isn't always entirely reliable! See figure 9.5.
Eclipse also provides some tooling for visualizing and generating manifests. For
example, clicking on the Dependency Analysis link in the Dependencies tab of the
Figure 9.5
If imported packages aren't available in the target platform, Eclipse will highlight them in
the manifest. In this case,
fancyfoods.food
is available, because it's another Eclipse project, but
the
javax.persistence
and
openjpa
APIs can't resolve.
