[news.eclipse.platform.rcp] Re: RCP, JAR plugins and Eclipse Web Start

[Pascal Rapicault <pascal@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Help can not work with JNLP because it has to be unjared.
Several workarounds:
- since you have a server to serve up the JNLP app, run the help system 
on the server and have it shared by the various users (like it is done 
on eclipse.org).
- include update.core/ ui in the app deployed. When the help button is 
pressed, install help from an update site and keep running. This will 
work because update will properly unjar the help plugins.

Personally I like the first one better.

PaScaL

Torsten Bergmann wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've built a simple RCP application which is deployed using JavaWebstart. To 
> achieve this I used the eclipse
> "Product export wizard" to build a standalone version of the application. 
> The plugin directory of the
> standalone product included all the jar's I needed for my little web start 
> application.
> I just had to sign the Jars and write some JNLP files similar to Ed 
> Burnettes Eclipse Web start
> example on www.eclipsepowered.com. Worked without any problems.
>
> So I enhanced the application and added Eclipse help support. Some of the 
> plugins required for the
> standalone help are already provided as JAR's (like org.eclipse.help.*) - 
> but some of them not.
> Especiall the plugin folder of my new enhanced standalone application now 
> has "org.eclipse.tomcat_4.1.30.1",
> "org.eclipse.help.webapp_3.1.0" and "org.apache.lucene_1.4.3" as extracted 
> directories.
>
> But to package them into Web start I need JAR's. So I tried to package them 
> using jar.exe, leave
> the resulting Jars in the plugin folder (similar to the other eclipse 
> plugins), delete their directories
> and restart the product - claiming that it may be no difference for the 
> runtime to get the plugin as
> JAR of extracted directory. Unfortunately the product was not able to load 
> the JAR'd plugins after that.
>
> Does onyone have successfully built a feature rich RCP application (help 
> support, cheatsheets, ...) and
> with only JAR's in the plugin directory.
>
> Thanks
> Torsten