Workspace launcher theme. about eclipse.platform.ui

[AObuchow]

Thanks for reporting the behaviour on MacOS.

On Linux, the issue is somewhat similar: Even if you have Eclipse set to a Light theme, the workspace launcher will use the GTK theme, which may or may not be dark.

I think the issue might be more difficult to fix on Linux than OSX since it is GTK theme dependant, however I'm not sure.

[laeubi]

so there is no way we can predict the theme for the workspace launcher dialog:

Eclipse stores the last used workspace so one could use the theme of the most recent workspace if its really important for the workspace chooser dialog to be "styled" but I'm not sure if styling is even available at this stage.

[vogella]

@davidsoles are you selecting the OS dark theme or the dark theme of Eclipse?

[davidsoles]

@vogella I'm selecting the dark theme of Eclipse.

[vogella]

Unfortunately the theme engine is only available after the workspace has been selected. PartRenderingEngine#run calls initializeStyling in line 1050 after ChooseWorkspaceDialog. So if we want to style the workspace selection screen we would have to enable the styling engine before. Not sure how much effort that would be but if you want to analyse and send a PR that would be great.

[merks]

Isn't the theme stored as a preference in the workspace? I think so, hence each workspace can have a different theme and you don't know the theme until after a specific workspace has been chosen...

[jukzi]

Would be best to not store the preference in workspace then :-) Or to use the theme of the last used workspace.
I currently use two workspaces with different themes to know which workspace i am in. But that's not an important feature.

[elsazac]

Isn't the theme stored as a preference in the workspace? I think so, hence each workspace can have a different theme and you don't know the theme until after a specific workspace has been chosen...

@merks - you are right, the theme is stored in the workspace, so there is no way we can predict the theme for the workspace launcher dialog:

cat $WORKSPACE/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.runtime/.settings/org.eclipse.e4.ui.css.swt.theme.prefs
eclipse.preferences.version=1
themeid=org.eclipse.e4.ui.css.theme.e4_dark

looks like a chicken & egg problem to me!

[mickaelistria]

FWIW, on Linux (or on GTK with other OS by the way), lower-level SWT, and thus the workspace launcher dialog widget as well, can be fully themed by relying on GTK themes, see for example https://eclipse.dev/eclipse/news/4.18/platform.php#system-theme . Launching an application such as Eclipse IDE with a different GTK theme is only a matter of setting a I_DONT_REMEMBER_WHICH_ONE environment variable and then you get full theming.