Castor Plug-in for Eclipse

The goal of this project is to integrate Castor, specifically the Castor Source Generator tool into the Eclipse workbench. This allows developers who use Eclipse as their Java IDE to invoke the generator from a user-friendly, familiar environment, rather than shell or Ant scripts.

From the Castor website:

"Castor is an Open Source data binding framework for Java[tm]. It's the shortest path between Java objects, XML documents and relational tables. Castor provides Java-to-XML binding, Java-to-SQL persistence, and more."

This project focuses on the XML side of Castor. It is not concerned with relational database mapping or persistence.

I started this project some time in the Spring of 2003 in an effort to learn more about Eclipse while making something useful that would make my job easier. The 1.x releases of the plug-in were an attempt to implement the generator as an incremental project builder. While the outcome was at least partially successful, it eventually became apparent that turning what is essentially an external tool into an incremental builder may not be ideal. After all, the Castor Source Generator is a command-line tool, which takes its inputs and generates its outputs without exposing much of the process, intermediate states, and other information important to a potential customizer. Without these pre-requisites, effective incremental builders are rather difficult to develop.

Now in its second incarnation, the plug-in is built on Eclipse 3.1 and wraps the Castor Source Generator as an External Tool. Please visit the News page to read the latest announcements. Feel free to download the latest version and explore its features. The Usage page will help you get started.

This plug-in is provided under the terms of the Eclipse Public License.