Proof of concept: gvSIG 1.11 libraries as a plugin in an Eclipse RCP app

Sat, 09/04/2011 - 19:53 — jldominguez

As Tobias Neumann suggested in the international list, it's easy to embed the AWT-based gvSIG canvas in an Eclipse RCP application.

As a proof of concept, I have created a simple mapping application and added gvSIG's main mapping libraries (including some vector drivers, the geometry model and the layer model) as a plugin. You can see the code here:

https://svn.prodevelop.es/public/labs/users/jldominguez/workspaces/gvsig/eclipse_rcp/

That does not include the plugin where I have added gvSIG's main JAR files. You can create it easily and add it as a dependency to the main project.

Here is a short video where I am adding a couple shapefiles which are also reprojected on the fly:

Geospatial

jldominguez's blog

As for the license issue:

Mon, 11/04/2011 - 23:43 — jldominguez

As for the license issue: strictly speaking, the only way to use a GNU/GPL plugin in an Eclipse RCP application is by creating a "license exception", which is not always possible. A clarifying article here:

http://mmilinkov.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/epl-gpl-commentary/

There are some Eclipse RCP applications and Eclipse plugins licensed under GNU/GPL. In those cases, I presume one of the following two things are happening:

- they have applied the "license exception"

- they are not distributing code or libraries from the Eclipse project in their packages/installers, so they let the final user be the one who "infringes" the GNU/GPL license by merging EPL and GPL software in the final application.