[platform-update-dev] questions about the Install/Update spec

[Patrick_Mueller@xxxxxxx]

I've just taken a quick perusal of the Install/Update spec, and it seems pretty good.  

Some questions though.

Iit appears features can pre-req plugins, but not other features.  It seems like it would be nice to allow features to pre-req other features.  In fact, I think for my purposes, having plugins reference features would be the nicest thing to do.  For instance, I might have a feature that installs some non-plugin data, which is actually a runtime library, meant to be consumed by a programmer using Eclipse.  As an example, most of the 'runtimes' and 'technologies' stuff out of WSDD.  I might also have an Eclipse plugin that can be used against the runtime libraries.  Note that I'm not going to push the issue of cross-linking jars within plugins, more the user experience of "I've installed some runtimes, now I want the tools".  Installing the tools without the runtimes basically doesn't make sense, but installing the runtimes without the tools does.  So, what I really want is for the plugin, whi!
 ch will likely be a feature in it's own right, to pre-req the feature that contains the runtime.

Also, I'm curious about not being able to nest features.  It sort of seems like a natural thing to do.  If you look at WSDD, it would be wonderful if you could press a button and download ALL the features, instead of having to pick all of them individually.  ie, pick the 'All WSDD Features', which just pointed to all the individual features.

Lastly, what is the current state of this work in Eclipse, and do you have any milestones for it, if it's not functional right now?

Patrick Mueller
patrick_mueller@xxxxxxx