eclipseeclipse-pluginperspective

Eclipse: Programmatically closing perspective after application starts

I am writing plugin for an Eclipse application. I wrote a custom perspective com.app.custom.ui.perspectives.MyCustomWorkspace to show few custom views and some views already provided by the application. So essentially my custom perspective is similar to one of the ootb perspectives, com.app.ui.perspectives.MyWorkspace, plus few of my custom views. One of the common views shared by my perspective and ootb perspective is com.app.ui.views.ViewerView.

If I start the application with -perspective com.app.ui.perspectives.MyWorkspace argument, the ViewerView view loads just fine. However, if I start the application with -perspective com.app.custom.ui.perspectives.MyCustomWorkspace argument, the ViewerView view does not load and throws an exception. I went back and forth with the application vendor to get support, but no avail. Here is relevant exception stack trace:

java.lang.NullPointerException
  at com.app.common.viewer.AutoCheckoutHelper.<init>(Unknown Source)
  at com.app.viewer.view.PanelViewer.<init>(Unknown Source)
  at com.app.ui.views.ViewerViewPart.createViewer(Unknown Source)
  at com.app.ui.views.ViewerViewPart.createContent(Unknown Source)
  at com.app.ui.views.ViewerViewPart.createPartControl(Unknown Source)

After some trial and error, I found that if I open MyWorkspace first, and then open MyCustomWorkspace, I don't get any exceptions loading ViewerView view, regardless of if the MyWorkspace remains open or is closed.

So, my question - After the application starts and the MyWorkspace loads first, how do I programmatically close MyWorkspace and open MyCustomWorkspace? I looked for perspective listeners, but could not find one that would be fired after perspective is finished loading. Is there any workbench or workbench window or application listeners that I could use.

I thought of using org.eclipse.ui.perspectiveExtensions to add my custom views to the ootb MyWorkspace perspective, but some of my custom views are added conditionally depending upon who the user is. perspectiveExtensions does not seem to provide any functionality to add conditions.

Edit-1: Removed the original reference to e4 application from my original post:

I am writing plugin for an Eclipse e4 application

Edit-2: Adding more clarification: All perspectives (custom as well as application provided) are defined using org.eclipse.ui.perspectives extension point, and all views (custom as well as application provided) are defined using org.eclipse.ui.views extension point.

Edit-3: Added exception details in the post.

Solution

  • After bunch of trial and errors, I found a solution (well, sort of)...

    I added Perspective Listener and inside the perspectiveActivated method, I called setPerspective to set MyCustomWorkspace perspective. However simply by calling PlatformUI.getWorkbench().getActiveWorkbenchWindow().getActivePage().setPerspective() threw exception. So I made the call as follows to set my custom perspective:

    Display.getDefault().asyncExec(() ->
{
  PlatformUI.getWorkbench().getActiveWorkbenchWindow().getActivePage().setPerspective(...)
}

    That does not throw any exceptions. It loads MyCustomWorkspace. However it messes with the menus and toolbar icons. Many of them don't show up. But that's the battle for some other time.