SWT/JFace or Eclipse RCP?

Question

Which are the reasons to choose the Eclipse Rich Client Platform as the base of my application, instead of just using SWT/JFace?

Answer 1

Eclipse RCP is not just a GUI (SWT/JFace), but an OSGi-based platform.

So, you would choose the RCP framework in order to:

• have a better definition of your different modules
• manage their lifecycles, and versions compatibility
• isolate classloader issues.

If your application is just one monolithic GUI font-end, RCP might be a bit overkill.