I suppose this is more of a praise of Eclipse plug-in architecture and available documentation than a review of the book per se, but I did not get from Eclipse: Building Commercial-Quality Plug-ins anything I could not by scanning online docs and playing with Eclipse myself. I was up and running with my plug-in project in a very short time without opening this book, and once I did, I did not find anything I have not already learned or known where to turn for more info…

It may be easy to say that many such books are just a rehash of the wealth of online information already freely available, but sometimes the books do have added value, say, by presenting the material for faster learning and/or reference. In this case, there can be no such added advantage – again, because the Eclipse project’s own design and documentation is very clear and thorough…

I realized all that before getting the book; in buying it, I was looking for another advantage – hidden tips and tricks, kind of like Covert Java. For example, how do I debug a plug-in project that depends on a non-plugin one?

No such luck.

I’ll be returning this book to the store now, and maybe trying to see if Contributing to Eclipse: Principles, Patterns, and Plugins is closer to what I want…