Project Notes


Project: Open Tools: Dynamic Class Loader
Author: JBuilder Team
Company: borland.com
Description: Tool for initializing Open Tools into the running JBuilder.

This sample is a convenient IDE extension, that provides you with a mechanism to test your own Open Tools (in the developping phase), without having to restart JBuilder everytime.

You supply the tool with the class name of your Open Tool and with a class path that contains your Open Tool and its depending classes and click on "OK".
The tool attempts to locate and read the requested Open Tool class file and its dependant files on the supplied class path from scratch or requests it from the SystemClassLoaders cache or classpath.
Make sure that the classes you are changing (the classes that represent YOUR OpenTool, which should be reloaded from scratch) are not reachable by the default class loader (i.e. the class path JBuilder is launched with), but are contained in the class path that you pass to this tool.
Once everything is reloaded, the initOpenTools(byte majorVersion, byte minorVersion) method of your Open Tool is invoked just like it happens on the JBuilder startup process.
Alternatively you can also start a Thread instead of an OpenTool that is launched in the same environment as JBuilder works (This is a convenient feature for OpenTools developers to figure out how things in JBuilder work together. E.g. checking out what a particular OpenTool class returns...)

This sample does not exercise much more of the Open Tools API than a HelloWorld sample, but makes the Open Tool development process much more comfortable for you.
Open Tools API:


Source File Descriptions:


Loading and Unloading Open Tools - Behind the Scenes: (toDo)


How to jar rsp. use it: (toSteal from somebody)