Description David Williams 2005-08-21 18:10:20 EDT

As more and more people "mix and match" various versions of plugins, jre's,
etc.,  its important to be able trace back exactly how and eclipse plugin was
compiled (and with what). 

So, in general, I think the Eclipse Platform should "log" the version of the JDT
compiler used to build Eclipse. 

I've tried doing this using "-showversion" as the compileArg parameter in the
component's build.properites files (and from the command line), but it does not
"carry through" to the plugins's compile step, for some reason. (That's why I
marked this as 'major', since its seems currently impossible to do?). [As far as
I know, this could be a PDE build script problem, or something ... but ... my
requirement is against releng, so will let you start :) ]
And even if/when its *possible* to do it, I'd like this "bug" to also be used to
request it always be done as part of Eclipse process. 

BTW, I tried this myself for SDK Examples and SDK JUnits on windows (haven't
trid "SDK build" yet). I used the R3_1 version of basebuild and eclipse.builder.
(FYI, I have sucessfully used this parameter in WTP builds, not sure what's
different, but feel confident its not actually a JDT compiler problem). 


<tangent>
One reason this is important, is that it is actually the JDT Compiler in the
*base builder* that is used to produce the byte codes in Eclipse builds. Hence,
my little investigation has revealed (as far as I can tell) that Eclipse 3.1 was
actually compiled with version JDT Compiler Version .567 (RC3) -- whereas the
JDT compiler * in * Eclipse 3.1, is version .570. From the buildnotes, etc.,
there's no obvious problem with this ... but it should be easily traceable, and
well documented. 
[Do others know that its the compiler from base builder that's used to compile
the builds ... I know myself and many others have been under the false
impression that if a "base eclipse" is specified, it would come from there ..
but apparently only the * libraries * come from there. ]
</tangent>

Tip: if you want to see what version of the compiler is in jst.core jar, you can
use 
java -jar org.eclipse.jdt.core_3.1.0.jar -version

Note: also see bug 107535 (I've asked the JDT compiler team to consider making
this a bit more automatic ... maybe you could add your vote there and cancel
this bug :)