[cross-project-issues-dev] p2 enabled builds

[Kim Moir <Kim_Moir@xxxxxxxxxx>]

With the last week's Eclipse project
integration build (I20080314-1059) the win32.win32.x86, linux.gtk.x86,
and macosx.carbon SDK drops are enabled with p2 metadata. I'm in the process
of updating the build so the remaining SDKs are also built this way.

For teams consuming and running tests
against these builds, I would strongly suggest reading this document.

http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox_p2_Getting_Started

If you're attending EclipseCon, Pascal
Rapicault is giving a talk on p2 on Thursday afternoon

http://www.eclipsecon.org/2008/?page=sub/&id=214


Here are some guidelines to help with
the transition.

1) If you're adding new  plugins
without using the p2 user interface, you'll have to unzip the test plugins
to the dropins folder instead of the plugins folder. From the getting started
document

The new dropins folder is where
you can drop in extra plug-ins if you don't want to use the p2 user interface.
A subtle twist on old behavior here is that plug-ins and features added
to the dropins folder are properly installed into the system rather
than being forced in. This means p2 has an opportunity to confirm that
the new plug-in doesn't conflict with other installed plug-ins, and it
can even go out and fetch any missing prerequisites of the newly dropped
in plug-ins. This also means you can later use the GUI to install extra
functionality that depends on the plug-ins in the dropins folder,
since p2 knows about them and can reason about their dependencies. In other
words, new plug-ins installed via the dropins folder behave exactly
like plug-ins installed via the user interface. 

Many teams may have command line scripts
to extract their build on top of the latest Eclipse project  I-build,
plus their test bundles.  You'll need to update these scripts to extract
them to the dropins folder.  For example, our test bundles are extracted
to eclipse/dropins/eclipse/plugins.  We have updated our build scripts
with these changes -  see https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=208021


2)  Use org.eclipse.core.runtime.FileLocator
to ask the platform for artifacts in the plugin install directory instead
of  assuming a hard-coded location on disk. See  https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=222895#c4

3)  If you're using our I20080314-1059
build, you'll have problems if your plugins don't have a manifest.  You
can create one by clicking "create an OSGi bundle manifest" hyperlink
in the Overview tab of the plug-in manifest editor.  Builds since
Monday March 17 do recognize pre-3.0 style bundles. See bug https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=222871

I'll write a wiki document for releng
teams that describes the approaches to generating p2 metadata in builds
once we have completed our transition.

If you have any questions, please use
one the following communication channels
IRC : #equinox-dev
mailing list: equinox-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Bugzilla:  Equinox p2


Kim