Bug 37345 javaElementFilters extension point isn't robust against errors in the plugin.xml
1) create a javaElementFilters extension, but leave the markup in the plugin.xml incomplete 2) start-up the workbench -> the package explorer doesn't come up The reason is that the javaElementFilters extension point implementation fires an assertion when the xml isn't complete. This is not correct since this isn't a programming error. In addition, an error in the plugin.xml shouldn't never block the workbench from properly coming up.
org.eclipse.jdt.ui/ui/org/eclipse/jdt/internal/ui/filters/FilterDescriptor.java
/*******************************************************************************
 * Copyright (c) 2000, 2003 IBM Corporation and others.
 * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials 
 * are made available under the terms of the Common Public License v1.0
 * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
 * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/cpl-v10.html
 * 
 * Contributors:
 *     IBM Corporation - initial API and implementation
 *******************************************************************************/
package org.eclipse.jdt.internal.ui.filters;
import java.text.Collator;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Set;
import org.eclipse.core.runtime.CoreException;
import org.eclipse.core.runtime.IConfigurationElement;
import org.eclipse.core.runtime.IPluginRegistry;
import org.eclipse.core.runtime.IStatus;
import org.eclipse.core.runtime.Platform;
import org.eclipse.core.runtime.Status;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Shell;
import org.eclipse.jface.dialogs.ErrorDialog;
import org.eclipse.jface.util.Assert;
import org.eclipse.jface.viewers.ViewerFilter;
import org.eclipse.jdt.ui.JavaUI;
import org.eclipse.jdt.internal.ui.JavaPlugin;