Eclipse plugin editor extension tab show “Generic” in “New” submenu

If you are an eclipse plugin developer like me you may have seen this issue time to time. You add an extension point and right click on it -> New -> … shows only “Generic”.

Generic submenu in Extension tab

This is not all. If you right click on the added extension and click Show Description or Open Schema you will get error messages saying.

“Description for extension point …… cannot be found.”

and

“Extension point schema for extension point ….. cannot be found.”

You might also notice that this is not the case for some of the added extension points. In such extension points you can view the schema get the documentation of the extension point and also the submenu shows the applicable attributes/properties for the extension point.

The reason behind this is that the source of the plugins relevent to the extension point are not specified. And for some the source jar/folder for those plugins exists. The schema for the extension point exists in the source of the plugin. Unless eclipse knows where to find the souce of the plugin it does not know what are the required properties for that extension point.

So the solution is obvious. Give also the source of those plugins to eclipse. There are few ways you can do this.

1. Download the source files and copy them to the respective features folder and plugins folder.
2. Download and specify the source file location in the eclipse preference

Window -> Preferences -> Plug-in Development -> Target Platform

select “Source Code Locations”

Source folder locations in eclipse preferences

click Add and specify the sources.

You might have to restart the eclipse after that.

(Or you could just download the SDK version of the eclipse when you download eclipse rather than the runtime version since the sdk includes the source also.)

Tags: eclipse extension point description not shown, eclipse extension point generic property, eclipse extension point new menu generic, eclipse extension point schema not showing, eclipse extensions adding new attributes, extension point attributes not shown in menu, Extension tab Generic Menu, plugin editor showing generic submenu