We have covered the mechanisms that Eclipse uses to store metadata values. A preference store is the key/value pair mechanism used by preference pages, as well as being interacted programmatically from headless plug-ins. It is also possible to use IMementos or DialogSettings to store transient information about a view or plug-in. While some code examples demonstrate IMemento, they are essentially useless and can be substituted with DialogSettings without any loss of generality. Some plug-ins just use PreferenceStore and ignore DialogSettings, even though information may not be strictly necessary to persist or share between instances. For that reason, the MessageDialogWithToggle also includes the ability to persist into an associated PreferenceStore.

In the next chapter, we will look at how to work with Resources inside Eclipse.