I would be so happy if you can pull this off.

Here's a taste of the structure defenitions:

 <structure name="CapitalShip">
  <field name="ability:0"/>
  <field name="ability:1"/>
  <field name="ability:2"/>
  <field name="ability:3"/>
  <field name="ability:4"/>
  <field name="defaultAutoAttackRange"/>
  <field name="defaultAutoAttackOn"/>
  <field name="prefersToFocusFire"/>
  <field name="usesFighterAttack"/>
  <field name="autoJoinFleetDefault"/>
  <field name="canBomb"/>
  <field name="hasBombingLevels"/>
  <field name="baseDamage"/>
  <field name="basePopulationKilled"/>
  <field name="bombingFreqTime"/>
  <field name="baseRange"/>
  <field name="bombTransitTime"/>
  <field name="bombEffectCount"/>
  <field name="bombEffectAngleVariance"/>
  <structure_reference name="bombEffectsDef" type="weaponEffectsDef"/>
  <field name="mainViewIcon"/>
  <structure_reference name="basePrice" type="Cost"/>
  <field name="slotCount"/>
  <field name="BuildTime"/>
  <structure_reference name="MaxHullPoints" type="LevelIncrease"/>
  <structure_reference name="MaxShieldPoints" type="LevelIncrease"/>
  <structure_reference name="HullPointRestoreRate" type="LevelIncrease"/>
  <structure_reference name="ShieldPointRestoreRate" type="LevelIncrease"/>
  <structure_reference name="ArmorPointsFromExperience" type="LevelIncrease"/>
  <structure_reference name="maxMitigation" type="LevelIncrease"/>
  <structure_reference name="MaxAntiMatter" type="LevelIncrease"/>
  <structure_reference name="AntiMatterRestoreRate" type="LevelIncrease"/>
  <structure_reference name="CultureProtectRate" type="LevelIncrease"/>
  <field name="NameStringID"/>
  <field name="DescriptionStringID"/>
  <field name="picture"/>
  <structure_reference name="Prerequisites" type="researchPrerequisites"/>
  <field name="roleType"/>
  <field name="statCountType"/>
  <field name="numRandomDebrisLarge"/>
  <field name="numRandomDebrisSmall"/>
  <iterative_field name="numSpecificDebris">
   <field name="specificDebrisMeshName"/>
  </iterative_field>
  <field name="armorType"/>
  <field name="hudIcon"/>
  <field name="smallHudIcon"/>
  <field name="infoCardIcon"/>
  <field name="minZoomDistanceMult"/>
  <iterative_field name="NumWeapons">
   <structure_reference name="Weapon"/>
  </iterative_field>
  <field name="m_weaponIndexForRange"/>
  <field name="firingAlignmentType"/>
  <field name="TargetCountPerBank:FRONT"/>
  <field name="TargetCountPerBank:BACK"/>
  <field name="TargetCountPerBank:LEFT"/>
  <field name="TargetCountPerBank:RIGHT"/>
  <field name="canOnlyTargetStructures"/>
  <field name="mass"/>
  <field name="ShieldMeshName"/>
  <field name="renderShield"/>
  <field name="maxAccelerationLinear"/>
  <field name="maxAccelerationStrafe"/>
  <field name="maxDecelerationLinear"/>
  <field name="maxAccelerationAngular"/>
  <field name="maxDecelerationAngular"/>
  <field name="maxSpeedLinear"/>
  <field name="maxRollRate"/>
  <field name="maxRollAngle"/>
  <field name="squadTypeEntityDef:0"/>
  <field name="squadAntiMatterCost:0"/>
  <field name="squadTypeEntityDef:1"/>
  <field name="squadAntiMatterCost:1"/>
  <field name="squadTypeEntityDef:2"/>
  <field name="squadAntiMatterCost:2"/>
  <field name="squadTypeEntityDef:3"/>
  <field name="squadAntiMatterCost:3"/>
  <iterative_field name="NumSoundsFor:ONATTACKORDERISSUED">
   <field name="SoundID"/>
  </iterative_field>
  <iterative_field name="NumSoundsFor:ONCREATION">
   <field name="SoundID"/>
  </iterative_field>
  <iterative_field name="NumSoundsFor:ONGENERALORDERISSUED">
   <field name="SoundID"/>
  </iterative_field>
  <iterative_field name="NumSoundsFor:ONSELECTED">
   <field name="SoundID"/>
  </iterative_field>
  <iterative_field name="NumSoundsFor:ONSTARTPHASEJUMP">
   <field name="SoundID"/>
  </iterative_field>
  <iterative_field name="MeshNameInfoCount">
   <structure name="MeshNameInfo">
    <field name="meshName"/>
    <field name="criteriaType"/>
   </structure>
  </iterative_field>
  <field name="meshNameIncreasedEffectName"/>
  <field name="meshNameDecreasedEffectName"/>
  <field name="ExhaustParticleSystemName"/>
  <field name="ExplosionName"/>
  <structure_reference name="CommandPoints" type="LevelIncrease"/>
  <structure_reference name="weaponCooldownDecreasePerc" type="LevelIncrease"/>
  <structure_reference name="weaponDamageIncreasePerc" type="LevelIncrease"/>
  <field name="HyperspaceChargingSoundID"/>
  <field name="HyperspaceTravelSoundID"/>
  <field name="EngineSoundID"/>
  <field name="formationRank"/>
  <field name="minShadow"/>
  <field name="maxShadow"/>
 </structure>

Mod tools released!

After lots of caffiene I believe I have a stable version for this tool. I've tested the EntityValidator against Vanilla, Entrenchment, Diplomacy as well as some significant mods that have been released.

Some of the results may not be obvious due to the nature of parsing these files but generally if the tool fails to parse the files there may be an issue. It is possible to run the tool in debug to get more information on why the tool failed on the particular file.

One example this tool does not like is using tabs or multiple spaces between a keyWord and it's value. This would be reported as an error even though the file will run in Sins.

Running the tool with failOnError set to false is a nice way to see all of the missing or incorrectly spelled references to String, Brush, Textures, etc.

Very nice, I hope to start testing it this weekend.

Looks interesting, keep up the work!

Released version 0.3 which makes minor improvements to the error reporting capabiltiies. I'm also toying with integrating this with eclipse as a custom Builder/Nature. I'm pretty excited about the possibilities of getting that working.

I realize this is not for the faint of heart, but I have a alpha version of the Eclipse editor tool available. It supports basic entity level validation support by the Ant build tools. I will be updating the ant build tools to reflect the current changes to the Entity validation process incorporated into the Eclipse Plugin.

It would be nice to turn this into a community project for any developers out there if interested. Many things could be added such as Wizards, content assist, etc. Although, I plan to continue on this albiet slowly in my spare time.

Part 2: Install Sins of Solar Empire Eclipse Plugin

Install Sins of Solar Empire Eclipse Plugin. Unzipping the latest soseplugin_v.x.x.zip and copy the jar file contained into the eclipse dropins directory. Restart Eclipse.

Activate Entity Validation

At this point the tool is running but it doesn't know where the reference files are.

Here is how it looks before associating the reference files. First screen is for abiltiies the tool can't find (Errors). Second screen is for String references the tool can't find (Warnings).

Now to tie in the reference files. First select Window/Preferences

Then set the three reference directories previously loaded.

Force the project to revalidate now. (occasionally required to validate the entire project currently). However, saving in an individual file will force a re-validation for that entity without performing this step.

Any remaining errors will be highlighted as shown.

Awesome!, so this works like the Dev. exe and it shows you exactly the line where the error is yeah? and it does it without having to run Sins.  What do the warnings indicate?

You might also check out codesion.com. It's a free source code repository (up to 200 MB). If you ignore binaries this can go along way as Subversion only stores the changes in files reducing the amount of space actually needed. The benefit of using a repository is history checking, versioning and branching. For example if you made some changes and it's not quite working right, you can easily do compares against any previous stable version.

I've setup the free repository for my stuff and it was really really simple to try it out. Of course a local repository always works too, but this one will support distributed team development. Plus I can connect to it from any computer.

Oops!, I did something wrong and I get this error;

Problems occurred opening the selected resources.
  The project description file (.project) for 'AHA2' is missing.  This file contains important information about the project.  The project will not function properly until this file is restored.

Hmm, when a project is created a file name .project is located in the project directory. Maybe this was accidentally deleted?

I recreated this by deleting the .project from my sample project directory. Restarting Eclipse appears to have recreated the file.