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| 1 : | dejan | 1.1 | <h1>Eclipse Update Policy Control</h1> |
| 2 : | <p>This document describes a new Eclipse Update capability that allows large | ||
| 3 : | shops with many seats of Eclipse-based products to exert control over how these | ||
| 4 : | products are updated. </p> | ||
| 5 : | <p>The document is related to a 3.0 plan item tracked by the following Bugzilla | ||
| 6 : | entry:</p> | ||
| 7 : | <p><a href="https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=37702">37702</a> [plan | ||
| 8 : | item] Improve organizational control over product updates</p> | ||
| 9 : | <h2>1. The Problem</h2> | ||
| 10 : | <p>Eclipse Update allows users to search for updates to the currently installed | ||
| 11 : | dejan | 1.5 | features. For each installed feature, Update uses the embedded URL to |
| 12 : | dejan | 1.1 | connect to the remote server and search for new versions. If there are updates, |
| 13 : | Eclipse allows users to initiate the install procedure. After downloading, | ||
| 14 : | installing and restarting the platform, new feature version is ready for use.</p> | ||
| 15 : | <p>In companies with many users of the same Eclipse-based product (typically a | ||
| 16 : | commercial one), several problems can arise from this model:</p> | ||
| 17 : | <ol> | ||
| 18 : | dejan | 1.5 | <li>Updates for very large products (e.g. 500+ plug-ins) are also large. |
| 19 : | dejan | 1.1 | I/T support teams may not like the idea of hundreds of developers individually |
| 20 : | dejan | 1.2 | downloading 500MEG updates to their individual machines. In addition to the |
| 21 : | bandwidth hit, such a large download request may fail, leading to repeated | ||
| 22 : | dejan | 1.1 | attempts and increased developers' downtime.</li> |
| 23 : | <li>Some companies explicitly don't want the developers downloading updates | ||
| 24 : | directly from the Internet. For example, they can set up a local support team | ||
| 25 : | dejan | 1.5 | that may not be ready to handle requests related to the version of the product |
| 26 : | already available from the provider's update site. They may want to restrict updates and | ||
| 27 : | dejan | 1.1 | fixes to the internally approved list. Ideally, they would do that by setting |
| 28 : | up 'proxy' update sites on the LAN (behind the firewall).</li> | ||
| 29 : | <li>Once updates are set in the proxy sites as above, administrators need a | ||
| 30 : | way of letting users know that updates are available.</li> | ||
| 31 : | </ol> | ||
| 32 : | <h2>2. The Proposal</h2> | ||
| 33 : | dejan | 1.2 | <p>The proposed solution in Eclipse 3.0 consists of three new capabilities that |
| 34 : | dejan | 1.5 | together address the above problems. </p> |
| 35 : | dejan | 1.1 | <h3>2.1 Support for creating local (proxy) update sites</h3> |
| 36 : | <p>First step for a product administrator would be to set up a local Eclipse | ||
| 37 : | update site on a server connected to the company's LAN (behind the firewall). | ||
| 38 : | The update site would be a subset of the product's update site on the Internet | ||
| 39 : | because it would contain only features and plug-ins related to the updates that | ||
| 40 : | dejan | 1.3 | the company wants applied at the moment. Technically, this site would be a |
| 41 : | dejan | 1.5 | regular Eclipse update site with site.xml, feature and plug-in archives.</p> |
| 42 : | dejan | 1.1 | <p>Administrators would construct this site in two ways:</p> |
| 43 : | <ol> | ||
| 44 : | dejan | 1.5 | <li>Product support teams would make a zip file of the update site readily |
| 45 : | dejan | 1.1 | available for this particular purpose. Administrators would simply need to |
| 46 : | dejan | 1.3 | download the zip file from the product support web page using the tool of |
| 47 : | their choice and unzip it in the local server. This approach is useful for | ||
| 48 : | very large zip files that require modern restartable downloading managers | ||
| 49 : | (those that can pick up where they left off in case of the connection | ||
| 50 : | problems).</li> | ||
| 51 : | dbirsan | 1.6 | <li>Eclipse Update would provide a tool to mirror remote update sites |
| 52 : | entirely or allow administrators to select updates and fixes to download. | ||
| 53 : | dejan | 1.5 | This mirroring capability would be fully automated and would greatly simplify administrator's task |
| 54 : | but it relies on Update network connection support (improved downloading | ||
| 55 : | dejan | 1.1 | reliability and performance is addressed in a different Update 3.0 plan item).</li> |
| 56 : | </ol> | ||
| 57 : | <h3>2.2 Common update policy control</h3> | ||
| 58 : | dejan | 1.5 | <p>Since features have Update site URL embedded in the manifest, they are unaware of the local |
| 59 : | update sites set up by the administrators. It is therefore important to provide <b> | ||
| 60 : | redirection capability</b>. This and other update policy settings can be set for | ||
| 61 : | an Eclipse product by creating an update policy file and configuring Update to | ||
| 62 : | dejan | 1.1 | use that file when searching.</p> |
| 63 : | dejan | 1.5 | <p>The file in question uses XML format and can have any name. The file can be set in <b> |
| 64 : | Preferences>Install/Update</b><font color="#0000FF"> </font>in the <b>Update | ||
| 65 : | Policy</b> group. The text field | ||
| 66 : | is empty by default: users may set the URL of the update policy file. The file | ||
| 67 : | is managed by the local administrator and is shared for all the product | ||
| 68 : | dejan | 1.1 | installations. Sharing can be achieved in two ways:</p> |
| 69 : | <ul> | ||
| 70 : | <li>If users install the product: users are told to open the preference page | ||
| 71 : | and enter the provided URL</li> | ||
| 72 : | <li>If administrators install the product: administrators edit the file 'plugin_customization.ini' | ||
| 73 : | in the primary product feature and set the default value of the 'updatePolicyFile' | ||
| 74 : | property as follows:<br> | ||
| 75 : | <br> | ||
| 76 : | dejan | 1.5 | <code>org.eclipse.update.core/updatePolicyFile = <URL value><br> |
| 77 : | </code><font color="#0000FF">[this does not work yet]</font><br> | ||
| 78 : | dejan | 1.1 | <br> |
| 79 : | dejan | 1.5 | This will cause all the installations to have this file set by default.</li> |
| 80 : | dejan | 1.1 | </ul> |
| 81 : | dejan | 1.5 | <p>File-based mechanism has been chosen for two reasons: it allows central control over the |
| 82 : | dejan | 1.1 | update policy settings for an installed product, and it is also 'all or nothing' |
| 83 : | - individual users cannot change some aspects of the policy while keeping | ||
| 84 : | others.</p> | ||
| 85 : | dejan | 1.5 | <p>The policy file must conform to the following DTD (note that the syntax is |
| 86 : | subject to change up to the 3.0 API freeze):</p> | ||
| 87 : | dejan | 1.1 | <blockquote> |
| 88 : | dejan | 1.5 | <p><tt><?xml encoding="ISO-8859-1"?></tt> |
| 89 : | <p><tt><!ELEMENT update-policy (url-map)*></tt><br> | ||
| 90 : | <tt><!ATTLIST update-policy</tt><br> | ||
| 91 : | <tt>></tt></p> | ||
| 92 : | <p><tt><!ELEMENT url-map EMPTY><br> | ||
| 93 : | <!ATTLIST url-map<br> | ||
| 94 : | pattern CDATA #REQUIRED<br> | ||
| 95 : | url CDATA | ||
| 96 : | #REQUIRED<br> | ||
| 97 : | ></tt></p> | ||
| 98 : | dejan | 1.1 | </blockquote> |
| 99 : | dejan | 1.5 | <h4>url-map</h4> |
| 100 : | <ul> | ||
| 101 : | <li><b>pattern</b> - a string that represents prefix of a feature ID (up to | ||
| 102 : | dbirsan | 1.7 | and including a complete ID). A value of "*" matches all the features.</li> |
| 103 : | dejan | 1.5 | <li><b>url</b> - a URL of the alternative update site that should be used if |
| 104 : | dbirsan | 1.7 | the feature ID begins with the pattern. If the string is emtpy, features matching |
| 105 : | pattern will not be updateable.</li> | ||
| 106 : | dejan | 1.5 | </ul> |
| 107 : | <p>This element is used to override Update URLs embedded in feature manifests. When | ||
| 108 : | looking for new updates, Eclipse search will check the update policy (if | ||
| 109 : | dejan | 1.1 | present) and check if <b>url-map</b> for the matching feature prefix is |
| 110 : | dejan | 1.5 | specified. If a match is found, the mapped URL will be used <b> instead</b> of the |
| 111 : | dejan | 1.1 | embedded one. This way, administrators can configure Eclipse products to search |
| 112 : | dbirsan | 1.7 | for updates in the local server behind the firewall. Meanwhile, third-party |
| 113 : | dejan | 1.5 | features installed by Eclipse Update will continue to be updated using the |
| 114 : | default mechanism because they will not find matches in the policy.</p> | ||
| 115 : | <p>Several <b>url-map</b> elements may exist in the file. Feature prefixes can be | ||
| 116 : | dejan | 1.1 | chosen to be less or more specific. For example, to redirect all Eclipse |
| 117 : | dejan | 1.5 | updates, the pattern attribute would be <code>"org.eclipse"</code>. Similarly, it is |
| 118 : | possible to use a complete feature ID as a pattern if redirection is required on | ||
| 119 : | a per-feature basis.</p> | ||
| 120 : | <p>Patterns in the file may be chosen to progressively narrow the potential | ||
| 121 : | matches. This may result in multiple matches for a given feature. In this case, | ||
| 122 : | the <b>match with a longest pattern</b> will be used. For | ||
| 123 : | dejan | 1.4 | example:</p> |
| 124 : | <blockquote> | ||
| 125 : | dejan | 1.5 | <pre><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> |
| 126 : | <update-policy> | ||
| 127 : | <url-map pattern="org.eclipse" url="URL1"/> | ||
| 128 : | <url-map pattern="org.eclipse.jdt" url="URL2"/> | ||
| 129 : | </update-policy></pre> | ||
| 130 : | dejan | 1.4 | </blockquote> |
| 131 : | dejan | 1.5 | <p>In the case above, all Eclipse features will be updated from URL1, except <code>org.eclipse.jdt</code> that will use URL2.</p> |
| 132 : | <p>Update policy files do not contain translatable strings and therefore do not | ||
| 133 : | require special NL handling. In general, the files should use UTF-8 encoding.</p> | ||
| 134 : | dejan | 1.1 | <h3>2.3 Automatic discovery of updates</h3> |
| 135 : | <p>The third part of the overall solution is covered by another plan item (<a href="https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=37684">Improve | ||
| 136 : | Update Manager search</a>) but is mentioned here because it is an integral part | ||
| 137 : | of the solution. Automatic updates will allow Eclipse to run update search on a | ||
| 138 : | specified schedule (on each startup (the default), once a day, once a week | ||
| 139 : | etc.). </p> | ||
| 140 : | <h2>3. Conclusion </h2> | ||
| 141 : | dejan | 1.5 | <p>Here is the complete sequence of steps that comprise the solution:</p> |
| 142 : | dejan | 1.1 | <ol> |
| 143 : | <li>Administrator allocates a server on the company LAN for hosting local | ||
| 144 : | dejan | 1.5 | product updates. Initially it contains no update sites. The machine must have |
| 145 : | an HTTP server running.</li> | ||
| 146 : | dejan | 1.1 | <li>Administrator sets up an update policy file on that server and instructs |
| 147 : | dejan | 1.5 | all users to set the update policy preference the provided URL.</li> |
| 148 : | <li>As the product provider ships updates and fixes on their update sites, | ||
| 149 : | administrator downloads supported updates onto the local server.</li> | ||
| 150 : | <li>Automatic update executed at the scheduled frequency when the client's | ||
| 151 : | product is up picks up the local | ||
| 152 : | updates and notifies the user</li> | ||
| 153 : | dejan | 1.1 | <li>User chooses to install the discovered updates</li> |
| 154 : | </ol> | ||
| 155 : | <h2>4. Schedule</h2> | ||
| 156 : | <p>Early implementation of the update policy (with redirection) is already in | ||
| 157 : | dejan | 1.5 | the regular integration builds (since M1) but expect the actual update policy |
| 158 : | dbirsan | 1.6 | DTD to be in flux at least until M2. The tool for creating partial local |
| 159 : | shadows of the remote update sites will appear in M3.</p> |
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