Debug action groups

Because the platform is designed to support many different programming languages and tools, it's likely that a user will have several different debugger implementations installed in the workbench.  Typically, a developer is working and debugging in one language at a time.  However, the debug implementations all share the workbench debug perspective and its associated views.  In order to prevent the debug view's tool bars and popup menus from being cluttered, debug plug-ins can specify named groups of debug actions that the user can choose to hide or show in the debugger.

Action groups are defined in the org.eclipse.debug.ui.debugActionGroups extension point.  An action group has an id, name, and visible attribute.  The visible attribute determines whether the actions in the group should be shown in debugger views by default.  The user can change the visibility from the preferences dialog.

The following example shows the markup for the debug action groups in the Java debugger:

<extension point = "org.eclipse.debug.ui.debugActionGroups">
<debugActionGroup
id = "org.eclipse.jdt.debug.ui.javaDebugActionGroup"
visible="true"
name="%JavaDebugActionGroup.name">
<action id="org.eclipse.jdt.debug.ui.actions.AddException"/>
<action id="org.eclipse.jdt.ui.breakpointViewActions.ShowQualified"/>
<action id="org.eclipse.jdt.ui.expressionViewActions.ShowQualified"/>
<action id="org.eclipse.jdt.ui.expressionViewActions.AddWatchExpression"/>
<action id="org.eclipse.jdt.ui.launchViewActions.ShowQualified"/>
<action id="org.eclipse.jdt.ui.variableViewActions.ShowQualified"/>
<action id="org.eclipse.jdt.ui.variableViewActions.ShowStatic"/>
<action id="org.eclipse.jdt.ui.expressionViewActions.ShowStatic"/>
<action id="org.eclipse.jdt.ui.variableViewActions.ShowConstants"/>
<action id="org.eclipse.jdt.ui.expressionViewActions.ShowConstants"/>
<action id="org.eclipse.jdt.ui.expressionViewActions.PrimitiveOptions"/>
<action id="org.eclipse.jdt.ui.variableViewActions.PrimitiveOptions"/>
</debugActionGroup>
</extension>

Note that the name specified in the extension point is what appears in the preferences dialog.

Preferences dialog with debug action groups

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