Workbench Support for Applications

The Wolfram Workbench provides a significant amount of support for Mathematica applications. In addition, it provides a significant amount of support for the Mathematica package structure.

Projects

Mathematica applications are supported by the Workbench through projects. Typically, each application should live in one Workbench project. These are discussed in more detail in the section on application projects.

Application Resources

Mathematica applications can hold different types of Mathematica resources. Many of these are supported by the Workbench. This includes Mathematica code and packages, front end stylesheets and palettes, documentation, J/Link classes, and GUIKit widgets.

You can specify paths to these resources with the Mathematica project paths system.

Application Tools

The Application Tools view lets you work with your application project, doing useful tasks such as building documentation and deploying the application. It can be opened from the menu bar, by selecting Window > Show View > Application Tools. (If you are not in the Mathematica perspective you need to select Window > Show View > Other and look in the Wolfram section.) The Application Tools are shown below.

PacletInfo.m

The PacletInfo.m is a descriptor file that can be added to a Mathematica application to describe its contents. At present, it is only used by the documentation system. A sample PacletInfo.m is shown below.

The Workbench provides a special multi-page editor for working with the PacletInfo.m. This provides convenient tools for changing details of the editor and working with the features it supports.

Creating and Setting Up an Application

The Workbench provides a number of ways to create an entire new application in a project. Alternatively, you can modify an existing project, adding the necessary Mathematica resources. A summary of the tools, such as wizards, is found in the section on creating and setting up projects.

Deploying an Application

The Workbench provides a number of ways to deploy your application from a project so that you can use it and distribute it to other people. A summary of the tools is found in the section on deploying applications.