About AspectBrowser for Eclipse
Following the lead of the Unix
grep tool, AspectBrowser for
Eclipse allows users to visualize programs in a Seesoft-like view by searching
for regular expressions and displaying the results graphically. Additionally,
AspectBrowser includes features to navigate through search results and manage a
potentially large set of regular expressions.
Installing and Starting
AspectBrowser
To run AspectBrowser for Eclipse you must have
Eclipse 3.0 or later
installed. (If you do not have Eclipse but wish to use AspectBrowser, you
can run the
stand-alone AspectBrowser
instead.)
Follow these steps to download and install AspectBrowser for Eclipse:
- Download
aspectbrowsereclipse-1.0.zip
by right-clicking on this link and selecting "Save As...". If you wish to
verify your download with an MD5 sum, use aspectbrowsereclipse-1.0.zip.md5
(not required).
- (Optional) Download the StarDiagram
and AspectBrowser for Eclipse source code.
- Close your copy of Eclipse, if it is open.
- Open up the
.zip file and copy the uncompressed
contents of the "plugins" folder (it's a folder named
edu.ucsd.aspectbrowser_1.0.0) to your Eclipse
"plugins" folder (this folder is in the top-level of your
Eclipse installation).
- Restart your Eclipse.
After the plugin has been installed, you can start AspectBrowser in Eclipse
by selecting Window→Open Perspective→Other... to bring up the Select
Perspective dialog. In the Select Perspective dialog click on "Aspect Browser"
and then click on "OK".
Features of AspectBrowser
In the Aspect Tree view you can create and edit aspects and manage them
into groups. In addition, you can view computed source information that
performs a lexical analysis of your programs and shows all existing
Eclipse markers.
Aspect Tree View
Create Aspect
Enter a regular expression into the "Grep Pattern" text field and click on
the "Create Aspect" button (or hit return) to create an aspect. An aspect
is shown when it's check box in the aspect tree is in the checked state.
Create Group
To create a new group, enter in the group name in the "Grep Pattern" text
field and click on the "Create Group" button. A new folder will be created
at the same level as the currently selected item in the aspect tree.
Enable/Disable Highlighting
When this toggle button is pushed down, aspects will appear in not
only the file visualization, but also in open text editors as "highlights".
This feature can allow you to quickly find search results in the text editor.
When the toggle button is up, highlighting is disabled.
Even when highlighting is disabled, aspects will still be represented in
the file visualization.
Remove Aspect (or Group) from Tree
Removes the selected aspect or group from the aspect tree.
Visualization and Navigation View
Move to Next Aspect
Move the text cursor to the next aspect found, possibly opening a new
text editor on a resource to visit it.
Move to Previous Aspect
Move the text cursor back to the previous aspect found.
Move to Most Recent Navigated Location
Double-clicking on areas of files in the file visualization will move the
cursor to that part of the file. This spot is marked with a red circle. If
you've scrolling down after moving to that location
Fold Empty Files
Fold blank files into narrow width strips if they don't contain any
aspects.
Increase File Visualization Zoom
Increase the size of the file representation (by default, one line of
pixels equals one line of text)
Decrease File Visualization Zoom
Decrease the size of the file representation.
Increase Width of Files
Make the file representations wider.
Decrease Width of Files
Make the file representations narrower.
