Building Cheat Sheets in Eclipse

Step 4: Export the Cheat Sheet JAR File

To use your cheat sheet, you must export it as a JAR and copy the JAR to the Eclipse plug-ins directory where it will be found next time Eclipse is started.

Before exporting, be sure all of your cheat sheet XML files are included in the build by clicking on the Build tab and making sure the Binary Build section has all your XML files checked. Be sure everything is selected except .project and build.properties as these are related to the Eclipse plug-in project structure, not to the cheat sheet content.

Also, select File > Save All to be sure all your files and settings are saved.

To create the cheat sheet JAR file, from the Overview tab, click on the Export Wizard link. All you need to do is specify the directory where the JAR file should be located and click on the Package plug-ins as individual JAR archives option. Click Finish to do the export, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9

Figure 9. Export the JAR

Step 5: Copy the JAR File into Your Eclipse Plug-Ins Folder

For Eclipse users, copy the JAR file into the ECLIPSE_HOME/plugins folder.

For BEA Workshop for WebLogic 9.2, drop the JAR files into WORKSHOP_HOME/workshop92/workshop4WP/eclipse/plugins.

For Workshop Studio, the JAR files go into STUDIO_HOME/Workshop/eclipse/plugins.

Now restart Eclipse so that the cheat sheet JAR file will be found.

Step 6: Access the Cheat Sheet

Click Help > Cheat Sheets to display the Cheat Sheets view.

If the Help > Cheat Sheets command is not available, click Window > Show View > Other, and choose Cheat Sheets > Cheat Sheets. Click OK. You can now open your cheat sheets by clicking on the pull-down menu at the top of the Cheat Sheet view and choosing Launch Other. Your cheat sheet category will appear in the list of groups, and you can expand your category and choose your cheat sheet.

Download

To get you started we've also provided downloadable JARs with a couple of sample cheat sheets plus our favorite: How to Make a Cheat Sheet cheat sheet:

Summary

This tutorial provides the basic steps for creating a cheat sheet. In truth, there's not a lot more to say. Cheat sheets don't provide extensive formatting options, since they're just intended to guide you through a series of steps. The one point that we didn't discuss is how to have a cheat sheet launch a wizard (for example, to create a new project) or some other action in Eclipse. We'll publish more on this later if there's enough interest.

References

Harriett Hardman is a senior technical writer working for BEA on the Workshop documentation team.

Steve Hanson is a senior technical writer for BEA Systems on the Workshop documentation team.