Re: [rt-pmc] Target Provisioning

[Jeff McAffer <jeff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sure.  I added this to the meeting agenda
   http://wiki.eclipse.org/RT/meetings/PMC_Minutes_090603

Some notes inline...
> I talked to the RAP team and they are seriously thinking to not 
> supplying RAP in the Galileo repository because they cannot get the 
> proposed p2.inf hack to work that would disable the possibility to 
> install RAP into the Eclipse SDK and certainly leave it (the SDK) 
> unusable.
The RAP team was using the old metadata generator which does not have 
p2.inf support.  They switched to the publisher (all the cool kids are 
doing it...) and are happy now.
> I am concerned because people will file bugs like "Riena cannot be 
> installed" rather than suspecting that the target provisioning system 
> itself is still a little unstable. Look at the bugs above some where 
> initially raised against Riena and we really have to thank Ekke for 
> investing weeks and weeks testing the target provisioning story.
Agreed on thanking Ekke.
> I'd like to discuss that today. I am NOT proposing to pull it (that is 
> impossible) but maybe mark it with a "beta" icon or by makig it 
> crystal clear that we know it has bugs and we expect to find more bugs 
> (more serious bugs) after GA. Prepare a wiki page to collect them. 
> Help users to have a good experience and avoid pitfalls.
>
> And this is a thing that will hit Runtime projects the most because 
> they are the one who uses target provisioning to setup their environment.
>
> The idea of the new target provisioning is really so great, people 
> waited so long, expectations are high and there is only one chance to 
> make a first impression. :-)
Understood.  it would be great to make some concrete suggestions to the 
PDE team for how to position this function.

One of the things that is an issue is the use of "Include 
dependencies".  This runs the p2 planner under the covers.  The planner 
works flawlessly yet people do not get what they need in the target 
context.  In many cases this is because the metadata is incompletely / 
incorrectly specified.  This can often be dealt with by unchecking this 
option.  In that case the target provisioner uses the p2 slicer and 
essentially just follows the "include" links in the features (ignoring 
the requires links).  This still gives you the value of not having to 
get zips, check versions, ... and avoids the metadata problem that comes 
up in some cases.

Note that this is part of a larger topic around metadata management.  To 
get the level of automation and control we want, we have to be more 
rigorous about defining the metadata.  To figure out how to do this we 
need to setup the situations and work through them.  That, IMHO is the 
real value in having the Target provisioning stuff in now and getting 
people to use it.

More in the call.
Jeff