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.