In Eclipse 3.6 Milestone 5 there is an interesting new feature in the category PDE:
API for plug-in project creation
An API is now available to create and modify plug-in (bundle) projects. The API provides a description of a project’s bundle related attributes and allows them to be modified declaratively. For example, a bundle’s activator, required bundles, package exports and imports can be queried and defined. As well, the root of bundle (i.e. the folder containing
META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
) can be placed anywhere inside a project (rather than just the root project folder). The new API is available in theorg.eclipse.pde.core.project
package of theorg.eclipse.pde.core
bundle.
This enables full PDE support for 3rd party Frameworks that generate bundle manifests (e.g. Bundlor, Sigil, ..). Running such projects as native RCP/OSGi applications in Eclipse should be easy when the tools support this feature.

