Re: [eclipse-pmc] Build on the plan

[Jeff McAffer <jeff@xxxxxxxxx>]

> The PDE/UI plan is not posted yet (web site permission issues...), however 
>   
It would be great to have a wiki page for people to contribute ideas and 
thoughts to.  Not everyone who might contribute to PDE is currently a 
PDE committer.  Can we coopt http://wiki.eclipse.org/PDE/Ideas for that 
purpose?  Note I am distinguishing here between what people want and 
what they are willing to contribute. Both are interesting. 

> * Support target platform definition by creating/modifying a p2 
> installation of bundles (download and install bundles into a target from 
> update sites) 
>   
Can you clarify the intentions here?  "Create/modify a p2 installation" 
I read as "... p2 profile" but the download/install part does not 
necessarily match.  Having the target as an actual profile is sort of 
interesting but it is not clear that one would want to (or can) actually 
"install/configure" things into the target "profile".  Before going into 
all the issues, can you clarify the intent?
> * Support multiple target platform definitions in the workspace, with one 
> active target platform that workspace projects are compiled against 
> (preference page with check box for active target) 
> * Investigate sharing target platform definitions with a development team 
> * Source code should be installed in/part of a target platform (source 
> bundles) rather than a global setting 
>   
How does this relate to target definition files? 

Stepping back, it would be very good to unify the way we talk about 
targets, products, features and launch configs.  They all need the very 
similar sets of function and currently there are several workflows that 
are disjoint such that you really "can't get there from here" (try 
creating an Equinox based app e.g., servers in which you want the 
launcher etc but are not using product/app extensions...)
> * Support target management for non-p2 installs (update manager) in a 
> similar fashion
>   
What is the motivation for supporting update manager scenarios with new 
tooling?  I agree completely with good support for non-p2 based systems 
but am not sure about the demand for new fancy tooling for update 
manager scenarios (unless it just works)

Jeff