Re: [buckminster-dev] different update site for a plugin

[Thomas Hallgren <thomas@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Denny,

One important thing to remember during publishing is the differentiation between what you provide yourself and the 
features and plug-in that others provide. Both types might exist in various places of the transitive dependency graph 
that extends from a plug-in. Buckminster will only traverse the first type.

As a rule of thumb, the two types of dependencies should be kept separate in a feature. The feature has 'Includes' and 
'Requirements'. The former will form dependencies that have an exact version requirement (this is what creates the exact 
set of things to install) whereas the version requirement of the latter is more relaxed to allow the feature to co-exist 
with other features that also use the same set of third-party features and plug-ins.

When Buckminster generates a site, it will not consider dependencies introduced with the latter as something that must 
be included. It will bring in all of the former though, since that's considered the set of things that make out your 
feature.

Another important mechanism that will have an effect of what gets pulled in is whether you're using bundle or package 
requirements in your OSGi manifests. Buckminster will never traverse a package requirement so if you want full control, 
then use package requirements everywhere and then describe what plug-ins to use to fulfill those requirements with your 
features.

Perhaps this piece of information can help you limit what gets pulled in to your update site.

Kind Regards,
Thomas Hallgren