[rt-pmc] A.PDE.Target.Platform.

[Markus Knauer <mknauer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

When I was going through the last CC protocol, I remembered that I agreed to start a discussion about the A.PDE.Target.Platform. issue on this list and on the p2-dev list. I got sidetracked by the Indigo SR2 release, but better late than never...

Background:

We want to prevent users from (accidentally) installing IUs that are meant to go into a target platform into their IDEs (see [1]). If we take the RAP project as an example, it provides alternative implementations of org.eclipse.swt and cannot be installed together with the standard swt bundles. But I think this is a more general problem that can affect many RT projects.

The recommended solution (or better: hack) is to use a p2.inf file to add an additional dependency that cannot be met by the IDE (the dependency to 'A.PDE.Target.Platform.') If an end user tries to install such an IU into his IDE, he will see a p2 failure and a cryptic message that he cannot install this IU. If a developer wants to create a target platform with p2, he manually needs to deselect the 'Include required software' checkbox in the 'Add Software Site' wizard. All this is not very intuitive and leads to a lot of confusion.



And now?

I'd like to bring this up again and hope that we can find a real solution, maybe in the Juno time frame, maybe for Kepler.

Some suggested to define another windowing system for RAP [2] but this has its own problems. 

The best solution seems to me a negative p2 requirement (see [3]), but these are not supported in p2.inf files.

Any thoughts from the RT PMC? I will write a similar mail to p2-dev soon.




[1] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=276000
      [target] Prevent SDK features from being installed into IDE

[2] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=338544
      Use Equinox PlatformFilter to prevent RAP installed into the IDE

[3] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=365004#c9
      improve "runtime only" handling



Thanks,
Markus