## What's New in 4.13 (PDE)

Here are descriptions of some of the more interesting or significant changes made to the Plug-in Development Environment (PDE) for the 4.13 release of Eclipse. They are grouped into:

- Dialogs, Wizards and Views
- API Tools
- PDE Compiler

## Dialogs, Wizards and Views

Configure start levels for feature based launch

Feature-based Launch Configuration now supports custom start levels and auto-start properties for individual plugins.

To configure them, you need to add the plugins via Add Plug-ins... first.

When launching a feature-based product, defined start levels and selected features are automatically filled out in the created launch configuration. You can then select features selected below to convert it to feature-based without any further configuration.

New Features view

You can now view the structure of features in your workspace projects using the new Features view.

To open the view, go to the Show View dialog (Window > Show View > Other...) and choose it from the Plug-in Development category.

By default the view shows only features, with child features listed under their parents rather than at the top level. The buttons on the view's toolbar allow plugins/fragments included within a feature to be shown, child features to be shown at the top level, and for the hierarchy to be inverted (to show the features including each feature).

## API Tools

Quickfix to add missing since tag after version update | On any API addition that also results in a version change, a quickfix is now available that first updates the version appropriately and then adds the `@since` tag based on the updated version.

Optimization in API tools builder

There are various optimizations that are done for API analysis builder which has improved the performance in some scenarios tremendously.

- Changing Missing API baseline option in Preferences > Plug-in Development > API Baselines preference page updates the marker appropriately instead of doing a full build.
- Removing or unchecking baseline in Preferences > Plug-in Development > API Baselines preference page removes all markers which requires a baseline instead of a full build.
- Removing or unchecking all API Use Scan locations in Preferences > Plug-in Development > API Use Scans preference page removes the relevant markers instead of doing a full build.

For example, changing Missing API baseline option in `org.eclipse.jdt.core` finishes instantaneously instead of 3 to 4 seconds earlier.

Full build on API tools preferences change

Manually changing the settings file .settings/org.eclipse.pde.api.tools.prefs of a project will result in a full project build, if the workspace auto-build is on.

For the 4.13 release, it is possible to disable this new behavior with the VM property: -Dorg.eclipse.disableAutoBuildOnSettingsChange=true. It is planned to remove this VM property in a future release.

## PDE Compiler

Full build on PDE compiler preferences change

Manually changing the settings file .settings/org.eclipse.pde.prefs of a project will result in a full project build, if the workspace auto-build is on.

For the 4.13 release, it is possible to disable this new behavior with the VM property: -Dorg.eclipse.disableAutoBuildOnSettingsChange=true. It is planned to remove this VM property in a future release.