Well, we for long have said that plain Java AOP and annotation defined aspects don't needs fancy GUI support, but I have to admit, this makes everyones life easier.

So I am pleased to announce the availability of the AspectWerkz Eclipse Plugin based on the 2.x releases.

Get it now, see the doc and the screenshots !

The plugin contains two almost disjunct features:

• an embedded compiler (a builder in the Eclipse plugin world) for our Java 1.4 strongly typed annotations. Just write the annotations as you would do with Java 5 but in JavaDoc (arrays, nested annotations etc are supported), and write one interface per annotation (where you would write an @interface with Java 5), and the plugin will do the trick when Eclipse will compile your code.
  The annotations are then accessible at runtime (using AspectWerkz Annotations API)and you can use them in your pointcuts (nothing new there).
  


• a glue layer that shows the cross cutting view that is add little markers in the gutter to remind you that this piece of code at that line (join point) is advised by this and that before advice in this and that aspect.
  

(Each feature is a builder so you can deactivate them on a a per project basis if you don't like them / use them.)

Aside since your app will gets weaved, you can just click run and the aspects are in - nothing more to do.
If you need to expose your dependencies jar files to the weaver, use the dedicated AspectWerkz launch configuration that will configure load time weaving for you.

Feedback welcome.
Any volunteer for further evolution ?

The plugin ships for Eclipse 3 and Java 1.4. More to come on Java 5 later.

Alex

Oh forgot to say before others make a story about that: yes we are the last one to write an Eclipse plugin, way (decades?) after AspectJ and some month after JBoss.