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Re: [epp-dev] A few questions about Eclipse packages
See my answers below.

As a general note, these feature IDs in the packaging features are the top nodes of a dependency tree. There may be cases where a package pulls in a whole lot of other features including source features by adding just a simple 'sdk' feature to its list of dependencies.

It would be best for you to start one of the packages and look at the tree that can be found in 'Help' > 'About Eclipse' > 'Installation Details' > 'Installed Software' tab. This should give you a better feeling of the tree-like structure.

Thanks,
Markus


On 29 May 2013 01:57, Christopher Guindon <chris.guindon@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi All,

I have a few questions regarding features id for packages.

I am currently building the new compare page[1] dynamically and I noticed some inconsistencies. 

I expected that all packages would include org.eclipse.rcp but that's not the case, for example, it's missing from java/report and automotive:

These packages get the org.eclipse.rcp feature via a dependency to org.eclipse.platform that includes org.eclipse.rcp.
 
I am curious about the role of feature ids; Are they needed to build the packages or is the only purpose to list them on the package detail page[2]?

They are required to build the packages and they mark the root-feature-ID of a dependency tree of installable units that make up a package.
 
Also, for each feature on the compare package page[1] I am verifing if the package is including the source. I do that by checking if a feature id exists with a ".source" suffix. 

For example:
org.eclipse.rcp & org.eclipse.rcp.source

Can I rely on this standard or is it possible that some features could use a different suffix for the source.

I think it's a good start to get a rough overview, but it isn't necessarily the whole truth. It will be true for most projects that I know of, but I'm not aware of a hard naming convention. As an example some projects may summarize their sources in a feature ending with '.sdk'...
 
I am also looking for some feedback on the list of features to show on the compare packages page[1], package details page[2] and the new filter functionality[3].

In my opinion [2] is the real improvement! Using the description and not the ID of a feature makes it much easier for users to find out about the content of a package. Again, it's only a list of the top-level features, but it's the best that we can provide for the time being.

Regarding [3] I am happy to see the textual description of the packages again after some years... we should work with the package maintainers to update and to adjust this text in the next weeks!
 
This XML[4] is a list of all the features we want to list on the compare package[1] and the package detail page[2]. I am thinking we might want to restrict the new filter functionality[3] with the same list of features. I am also open to creating a separate list for each of those pages.

The features.xml [4]: The RCP feature is included in all packages; therefore I'd suggest to remove it from the list.

Package maintainers: What's your opinion here? Is the list complete, does it need some tweaking, additions, ...?
 

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