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Difference between revisions of "Equinox/p2/Getting Started"

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The meaning of the Flavor property is an advanced topic, so don't play with that unless you want to explore error conditions! In fact, once it has been set in a profile and something has been installed using that flavor, the Flavor property should be non-modifiable (bug).
 
  
 
If a Metadata repository or a Profile is not empty, then you can expand it to see the installable units (which are really installed units) in the profile. A preference is available to show only the installable units which are a Group; the default for this preference is true. Expanding to show the groups will give you something like this:
 
If a Metadata repository or a Profile is not empty, then you can expand it to see the installable units (which are really installed units) in the profile. A preference is available to show only the installable units which are a Group; the default for this preference is true. Expanding to show the groups will give you something like this:

Revision as of 13:29, 7 August 2007

Getting Started with Equinox Provisioning (M1)

What is the first thing that you would expect to do with some provisioning code - install something, of course! This section is to guide you through a happy-path using equinox provisioning to install an Eclipse SDK.

There are four basic concepts that will help you understand the install:

  • Agent - the program that will perform the install. In general, the provisioning agent could appear in various forms - a standalone application, a silent install demon, a perspective in the ide. We will use the Admin UI application to do our install.
  • Metadata - the information about what can be installed. The metadata is used by the agent to analyze dependencies and perform the installation steps. Metadata lives in one or more repositories.
  • Artifacts - the actual bits that will be installed. There are various kinds of artifacts that are processed differently during the install. Associated metadata determines how a given artifact is processed. Artifacts live in one or more repositories. The metadata and artifacts generally come from different repositories and may be widely distributed.
  • Profile - in the most simple form, a profile is the location where the bits will be installed. The term 'profile' is not a very good term and probably will disappear from end user concepts (there's a bug about this), but it is the term we are using for now.

Steps to Install an Eclipse SDK

This week we will be installing a 3.3 SDK, but at the end of 3.4M1 we will generate metadata for that and support that SDK instead or, better yet, as well. The current install is only supported for Windows but eventually we will build and test the other supported platforms.

Step 1 - Exploring the agent

The agent is available from an eclipse download site Admin application - click the link and you should see (Firefox)

   AgentDownload.jpg

The zip file is ~15 MB. You can download and unzip into the root of your C: drive (right, that's C:) or select Open with and copy into the root of your C: drive. At some point the Admin application will be or will have a bootstrap installer that allows you to choose where to install, but at the moment we have some embedded absolute paths. (Don't have a C: drive? Sorry.)

The result of this step is that you will have a directory C:\equinox.prov:

   ProvDirectory.jpg

The meaning of the Flavor property is an advanced topic, so don't play with that unless you want to explore error conditions! In fact, once it has been set in a profile and something has been installed using that flavor, the Flavor property should be non-modifiable (bug).

Step 2 - Exploring the agent

Double-click on C:\equinox.prov\eclipse.exe and the Admin UI will come up looking like (resized to fit here):

   AgentInitial.jpg

Note that you see here all four concepts:

  1. Agent - the main window.
  2. Metadata - the exposed Metadata Repositories view.
  3. Artifacts - the hidden Artifact Repositories view.
  4. Profiles - the Profiles view.

The Metadata Repositories view shows three repositories. Notice that the first two metadata repositories are squirreled away in agent data subdirectory of the configuration directory of the Admin UI rcp application on your machine. These two repositories are really an implementation detail that should be (and will eventually be) hidden from most users. The third repository is a site on org.eclipse.download where our metadata of interest lives.

The Profiles view shows the Equinox Provisioning UI profile which is profile defining the install location for the Admin UI app you are running. If you right click on the list item and select properties, you will see some information about this profile:

   AgentProfileProperties.jpg

If a Metadata repository or a Profile is not empty, then you can expand it to see the installable units (which are really installed units) in the profile. A preference is available to show only the installable units which are a Group; the default for this preference is true. Expanding to show the groups will give you something like this:

   ExpandedInstallableUnits.jpg

Switching to the Artifact Repository tab and expanding will show:

   Artifacts.jpg

Step 3 - Creating a new profile

You will need to decide where you want to install the SDK and create a profile for that location. In the profile view, right click and select 'Add a new profile':

   SelectNewProfile.jpg

then fill in the appropriate data in the Profile properties dialog:

   NewProfileDialog.jpg

Step 4 - Doing the install

The sdk group is near the bottom of the list of group installable units in the repository http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/equinox/provisioning/metadata/ so scroll down until sdk is in view. The Admin UI supports two ways of initiating an install: 1). you can right click on the sdk group, select Install..., then choose the profile in the resulting popup dialog; or 2). you can drag&drop the sdk group onto the profile. Let's do d&d since it is easier (the little smudge over MyEclipseSDK is the drop cursor):

   DropSDK.jpg

then click Yes on the resulting Install IU dialog:

   ConfirmInstall.jpg

and boom, the install will start (assuming you have network connectivity org.eclipse.download, no firewall issues, etc):

   InstallProgress.jpg

Anecdotally, the install takes slightly less time than the download of a corresponding Eclipse SDK zip (one datapoint: 21 minutes for equinox provisioning install vs. 23 minutes for download of the zip). The progress monitor gets stuck after reporting 'Collecting for xyzzy' for a few files (bug, sorry), but you can check on continued download progress by watching new files appear in C:\equinox.prov\plugins.

Step 5- After the install

The install will finish with a whimper, not a bang, as the progress dialog disappears and the new profile you created is populated with the groups and installable units that are now installed into the profile:

   AgentPostInstall.jpg

The directory you chose for your profile location will look like this, before running the eclipse you just installed:

   InstalledSDK.jpg

See also

If you encounter bugs, or would like to enter enhancement requests for this work, please use the Equinox Incubator category in Bugzilla. You can add the prefix "[prov]" to the subject line of the bug report to help us with bug triage.

For more detailed information, visit one or more of the following pages ==

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