[News.eclipse.technology.packaging] Re: Custom distros for private use?

[Markus Knauer <mknauer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Aaron,

see my comments below... :)

Aaron Siri wrote:

> I'm attempting to use the EPP features for creating a custom distro for
> use within my company.  It is mainly a version of Eclipse with the
> plugins we need already installed and ready to go.  I have a few
> questions:
> 
> 1. Is creating custom distros for private (local) use an expected use of
> EPP?

Yes, this is a use case, but I didn't provide a fancy editor for the config
files, nor is it really integrated in Eclipse as it is running on the
server.
If many people start using the EPP tools (and not only our packages), I
would be happy to work with other interested people on making it more easy
to use.

> 2. Which versions of Eclipse are expected to be in the rootFileFolder?
> The RCP versions?  SDK?  I don't want to have a mirror of the entire
> eclipse.org downloads and am wondering what I need for EPP to build
> bundles.

I am using the Eclipse Platform downloads. EPP uses the root files from that
archive. I know that there are better ways, but it is a reliable method to
get everything you need.

On the other hand, the name of the files is kind of hard wired. The EPP
build uses the rcp version attribute (e.g. "3.4M4") to build the file name
of the platform archive. I am not sure, but it looks like this could be
your problem below.


> 3. Are non-eclipse.org update sites supported?  (I was having problems
> pulling a feature from a non eclipse.org site and want to make sure EPP
> wasn't hardwired to work with eclipse.org.)

Yes, it's a standard URL and it is up to you to use something like
file:///home/data/httpd/download.eclipse.org/releases/ganymede/ if you are
on the build server itself, or to use another URL.

The EPP build is caching the downloaded features and plugins, i.e. you do
not have to download things twice if you are running multiple builds.


> 4. (This may be related to question 2 above)  I've created a
> configuration file and, using the CVS version of EPP as described in
> "How to build a package locally" it seems to get through a lot of the
> packaging process until it gets to the "Building configured
> application..." step.  All I see is (via an ant target):
> 
>>      [java] Building configured application...
>>      [java]   Configuration files taken from
>>      [/home/aaronsi/workspace/packagerConfiguration.
>>      [java]   The application will be built in /home/aaronsi/workspace.
> 
> at which point it dies silently.  Any idea on what should be happening
> next or what I'm doing wrong?  I have the SDK and RCP eclipse packages
> in the rootFileFolder.


A successful build log looks like this here:
http://download.eclipse.org/technology/epp/downloads/release/ganymede/M5/jee.log

If everything is okay you would see as next messages

##   Packing installation site....Done.
##   Building...Done.
##   Moving Files...Done.
## Done.

Do you have any log files in your runtime workspace?

Or did you try to start the build with '-consoleLog'?

Sometimes it's really hard to figure out a specific error. Most of the times
there are dependency errors (one plugin requires a specific version of
another, etc.)

Let me know if one of these things helped to solve your problem and to get
your EPP build running.

Markus


> 
> Thanks for any info.
> 
> -Aaron