[p2-dev] Shared installs and our EPP Packages

[Ian Bull <irbull@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

There have been a number of bugs opened regarding shared installs not working [1,2,3,4,5,6].  While I don't know if they are all related, I have tracked down a configuration problem with some EPP packages that is causing this (at least it's causing it in some cases).  In both Eclipse for Java Developers and the PHP package (I didn't check the others) there are bundles listed in the bundles.info file that are not in the p2 profile. When Eclipse is launched in a shared install scenario this configuration problem will limit our ability to install additional bundles. See below for the technical reasons*.

While shared installs were not very common in the past, they are standard install on Windows 7 (when someone installs Eclipse in the C:\program files directory).  So this means that anybody using an affected Helios package on Windows 7 (installed in c:\program files\) cannot install additional bundles using either the p2 UI or the MPC.

So this brings up a few questions.

1. Is this a known problem?

2. Do we want to address this for SR1?

3. How are the Helios packages created?  I created a helios package manually using the director command**, and it was configured properly.  There must be additional steps that the helios epp builder is doing that I'm not aware of.  There are also two p2 profiles in our EPP packages, which seems odd to me.

[1] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=320153

[2] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=317896

[3] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=321239

[4] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=320383

[5] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=317897

[6] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=317757

* When we run in a shared install scenario, we create a bundles.info file from the p2 profile. When Eclipse is launched, our generated bundles.info file is checked against the shared one, and if any inconsistencies are found, we ignore ours and use the shared one. However, the shared one is read only, and will never contain the additional bundles.

**  I used the following director command when installing an EPP package from the Helios repository:

./eclipse -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 

-repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/helios 

-installIU epp.package.java    

-destination /home/irbull/eclipse/eppinstall/ 

-profile eppProfile

-p2.os linux 

-p2.ws gtk 

-p2.arch x86

cheers,

ian

--
R. Ian Bull | EclipseSource Victoria | +1 250 477 7484
http://eclipsesource.com | http://twitter.com/eclipsesource