Does Eclipse have this extensibility Feature like Visual Studio without any coding?

Question

In Visual Studio you can add an external tool and pass it the selected text as parameter.

Does eclipse have the same kind of feature or are one obliged to code a plugin for that ?

If so, any specific code sample to do just that because all I found is general sample plugin for custom editor.

Answer 1

In the menu, go to : Run > External Tools > External Tools Configuration.

This will open a dialog in which you can create external tools configuration (to execute external programs from Eclipse) :

_{(source: pascal-martin.fr)}

At the bottom of the dialog, there is a region for "Arguments", and a button called "Variables". If you click on this one, you have a liste of variables you can use.
Of of those is "selected_text", which "Returns the text currently selected in the active editor." :

_{(source: pascal-martin.fr)}

This should allow you to launch pretty much whatever program you want/need, directly from Eclipse, without having to create any plugin ;-)
ONly thing is those programs will not be quite well integrated in Eclipse -- but still usefull !

Answer 2

As a side note might be added, that the possibility to add external tools was one of the key features of the eclipse platform once it was brought up back in the days. VisualAge had a big problem with external tools.

Answer 3

Sure, they are even called "External Tools". look in Run->External Tools.

Actually, start by typing "External Tools" into the Eclipse Help search box.

Eclipse has the kitchen sink, do you think they would leave this out? :-)