Why RCP?

The Rich Client Platform (RCP) is an exciting new development that was first offered in Eclipse version 3.0. RCP leverages the plug-in architecture of Eclipse to allow rapid development of sophisticated GUI applications. Basically, RCP allows the developer to build applications on the core Eclipse platforn. Through a process of customization, Eclipse features such as the help system, welcome screen, splash screen, SWT look-and-feel, and preference pages.

A potential downside to using RCP is that all of this is very new. RCP documentation is somewhat sparse and uneven, and subject to fairly significant changes as the Eclipse development process continues. Backward compatibility has been difficult to maintain. This is understandable, as the RCP required an extensive refactoring of Eclipse and the upcoming version 3.2 is expected to include a further refactoring of the core Eclipse runtime. Nevertheless, RCP is the cutting edge in the Eclipse API and is already gaining strong support in the application developer community.