Description Valentina Popescu 2006-02-10 10:52:15 EST

Standard Java ResourceBundles have quite inefficient space characteristics. Since a running Eclipse tends to have many externalized messages, the eclipse team has implemented a new message bundle to be used starting with Eclipse 3.1.

For more information go to http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/platform-core-home/documents/3.1/message_bundles.html?rev=1.9

Note that Eclipse provides an automated tool that generates the new message bundle from the existing one. The steps are defined in the above page link, under the Tools Conversion section.

These are the steps for moving to the new bundle ( the conversion tool would cover steps 1-3 ):

1.Identify the strings in plugin.properties that are not used in the plugin.xml file

2. Create one or more message.properties files per plugin, to store these strings

3. For each message.properties file, you should define a peer Message java class that will be used to retrieve the string

4. Optionally- but a great improvement if this is done- update the string key to a short string
Example:

Old key:
LOG_COMPONENT_IDENTIFICATION_INVALID_LOCATION_TYPE_EXC_ = IWAT0212E The component identification with component named [{0}] has an invalid location type: [{1}] 
New key:
_1 = IWAT0212E The component identification with component named [{0}] has an invalid location type: [{1}]

Code sample:

package org.eclipse.hyades.logging.adapter.ui.internal.util;
import org.eclipse.osgi.util.NLS;

public final class AdapterUIMessages extends NLS {

 private static final String BUNDLE_NAME = "org.eclipse.hyades.logging.adapter.ui.internal.util.messages";//$NON-NLS-1$

 private UIMessages() {
  // Do not instantiate
 }

 public static String _1;
 public static String _2;

 static {
  NLS.initializeMessages(BUNDLE_NAME, UIMessages.class);
 }
}

messages.properties:
_1   = &Timezone GMT offset:
_2   = &Log file creation date for file {0}:


Old code:
public class MyClass {
   public void myMethod() {
      String message;
      ...