The PDE provides a comprehensive plug-in development environment.
PDE itself is divided up into a number of separate plug-ins. The following table shows which API packages are found in which plug-ins (the most commonly referenced API packages are highlighted). This table is useful for determining which plug-ins a given plug-in should include as prerequisites.
| API Package | Plug-in id |
| org.eclipse.pde.api.tools.annotations[.*] | org.eclipse.pde.api.tools.annotations |
| org.eclipse.pde.core[.*] | org.eclipse.pde.core |
| org.eclipse.pde.launching[.*] | org.eclipse.pde.launching |
| org.eclipse.pde.ui[.*] | org.eclipse.pde.ui |