Use of IPageLayout.addActionSet()

I'm defining my own perspective using:

<extension point="org.eclipse.ui.perspectives">

In my implementation of IPerspectiveFactory::createInitialLayout() I want to use IPageLayout.addActionSet() which points to a new actionset. But actionsets are deprecated; what is the recommended alternative?

The reason I want to add a new actionset is I want the Run menu to display debug actions, but not run actions. If I use layout.addActionSet(IDebugUIConstants.LAUNCH_ACTION_SET) I get both. So I figured I'd define my own actionset with just the debug variants in. But I'd like to use a non deprecated API. What's the recom

Solution

The alternative is to use the org.eclipse.ui.menus extension point for menu items. However you can't add this to a perspective, instead you have to use the visibleWhen element to control when the menu is shown.

For example this is how the PDE plugin adds a menu to the Navigate menu when the plugin development perspective is active or the search action set is in use:

  <extension
         point="org.eclipse.ui.menus">
      <menuContribution
            locationURI="menu:navigate?after=open.ext2">
         <separator
               name="org.eclipse.pde.ui.openPluginArtifactSeparator"
               visible="true">
         </separator>
         <command
               commandId="org.eclipse.pde.ui.openPluginArtifact"
               icon="$nl$/icons/obj16/open_artifact_obj.gif"
               label="%pluginsearch.action.menu.name">
            <visibleWhen>
            <or>
                <with
                     variable="activeWorkbenchWindow.currentPerspective">
                    <equals
                        value="org.eclipse.pde.ui.PDEPerspective">
                    </equals>
                </with>
                <with
                     variable="activeContexts">
                  <iterate
                        operator="or">
                     <equals
                           value="org.eclipse.pde.ui.SearchActionSet">
                     </equals>
                  </iterate>
               </with>
           </or>
            </visibleWhen>
         </command>
      </menuContribution>

Although action sets are deprecated they are not going to be removed for a long time as a lot of Eclipse code still uses them, so you may just want to stick with them.