[cross-project-issues-dev] Orbit Versus Maven

[Ed Merks <ed.merks@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

As most of you know, Orbit provides regular builds scheduled to 
coordinate with the SimRel schedule.  For 2023-06 M1, Jonah produced 
this build:

https://download.eclipse.org/tools/orbit/downloads/drops/S20230403203110/index.html

and this specific p2 repository:

https://download.eclipse.org/tools/orbit/downloads/drops/S20230403203110/repository

This repository composes the latest such stable build:

  https://download.eclipse.org/tools/orbit/downloads/latest-S/

It is currently planned to reduce what's available via Orbit.  In 
particular, we plan to stop adding new versions of libraries to Orbit 
for those libraries available at Maven Central with proper OSGi 
metadata.  For such libraries one can use the m2e location in your 
project's *.target to fetch those libraries (and ensure that you PGP 
sign them), or use what's described below.

For SimRel I have analyzed those contributing projects that are pulling 
libraries directly from Maven and have implemented dependabot-like tools 
to help keep those projects up-to-date with the latest version as 
described here:

  https://github.com/merks/simrel-maven/blob/main/README.md

I've been helping the Platform directly with this activity; WWD and tm4e 
ought to have a look at the reports generated for them...

In any case, starting for 2023-06 M1, I will produce regular milestone 
builds (and eventually release/recommend builds) of all the 
direct-from-maven libraries being contributed by SimRel projects, 
updated to their latest available minor version:

https://download.eclipse.org/oomph/simrel-maven/milestone/S202304041507

This will always reference the latest such milestone:

https://download.eclipse.org/oomph/simrel-maven/milestone/latest

In fact, there are a few additional libraries added because the build 
infrastructure tests that each library's transitive requirements are 
satisfied by other libraries in the repository. Going forward, we plan 
to add libraries to this repository to replace the older version in 
Orbit and also removing the library from Orbit.  Of course these 
libraries are all PGP signed.

To complement the Orbit repository and the direct-from-maven repository, 
I will also be producing regular milestone (and eventually 
release/recommend builds) of the aggregation of those two repositories, 
e.g., this for M1:

https://download.eclipse.org/oomph/simrel-orbit/milestone/S202304041533

This repository composes the latest such stable build:

https://download.eclipse.org/oomph/simrel-orbit/milestone/latest

While building that repository (using the CBI p2 aggregator), I noticed 
that a significant number of the bundles in the latest Orbit stable 
build depend on bundles that are only available in older Orbit builds.  
So the aggregation also pulls in any transitively-required bundles from 
the final older (CVS-driven) Orbit recommended (release) repository.  As 
such, the simrel-orbit repository is transitively complete with respect 
to requirements.

The simrel-orbit repository is intended to provide one-stop-shopping to 
cover all your Orbit requirements and to help coordinate the versions of 
all your direct-from-maven requirements.  Please try to use the latest 
versions available here, and look at your reports to avoid duplication 
and to avoid problems like the highly-problematic multiple-gsons problem 
we had during the previous release cycle.

If you have questions, please read the details in the following issue 
and ask the questions on that issue to avoid spamming this mailing list:

  https://github.com/merks/simrel-maven/issues/3

(Sorry, Oomph is not yet migrated to Github, so I keep this in my 
account repo for now.)

Regards,
Ed