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In NetBeans, When there are plugin dependencies such as VP-UML Plugin or ADT Plugin and if the plugin has other dependencies then, they are automatically fetched & resolved by the IDE itself. In Eclipse 3.5, To Install Plugin, we go to Help->Install New Software->Add new Site & install the plugin. While installing the plugin then, Eclipse lists down the missing plugins. Eclipse Users are left stranded because we are not aware in which url are these plugin dependencies available. Once Users find the url for the dependencies for the missing plugins & install them then, Eclipse sometimes reports for other missing dependent plugins which is not user friendly. It would be extremely useful if Eclipse finds the missing dependent Plugins & Installs them automatically similar to IDE like NetBeans.
(In reply to comment #0) > In NetBeans, When there are plugin dependencies such as VP-UML Plugin or ADT > Plugin and if the plugin has other dependencies then, they are automatically > fetched & resolved by the IDE itself. p2 should do this if it is capable of identifying its dependencies on the list of update sites you have told p2 about. > While installing the plugin then, Eclipse lists down the missing plugins. If it can't find the dependencies on the list then I believe this will happen. > Eclipse Users are left stranded because we are not aware in which url are these > plugin dependencies available. I don't think the p2 provisioning system knows either so I am not sure if anything can be done here. Do NetBeans modules inherently contain information about where they should be downloaded so even if you add one site and that module actually needs N other sites it will know where exactly those sites are?
Plug-in dependencies are automatically resolved today from the known set of repositories (make sure you have the "contact all the update sites" option enabled) and by design our dependency resolver guarantees that if there is a solution that can satisfy the dependencies it will be found. Now if dependencies are missing because no repository contains them, there is not much we can do except maybe invoke google behind the scene :) Normally it is expected that repository provider would make available to their users everything required for the plug-ins to install by either publishing all the necessary metadata in their repo or referencing other repos. That said we could try to come up with a mechanism that would allow for repositories to be discovered based on missing dependencies or have a unique site where all the plug-ins are published (like Eclipse PlugIn Central).
Thanks for the update. As Eclipse 3.5 had no UML plugin by default enabled, I tried installing VP-UML plugin which was proprietary. I had to install the trial version & It had few dependencies which I resolved by searching the dependent plugins in Google. However, when I tried the same in NetBeans 6.0, the UML Plugin got installed after resolving all the dependencies automatically. As wisely said, If all eclipse plugins are stored in a central place incase of problems while identifying the dependencies would be of much help to the end user.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 218534 ***
Undup-ing to then dupe with 218048.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 218048 ***
