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Equinox/p2/Installer
Equinox p2 now produces a small SWT-based installer that can be used to install the Eclipse SDK. This article gives details on how to use the installer.
Contents
Why should I use the installer?
Traditionally Eclipse software is obtained in the form of a zip or tar.gz file that is simply extracted onto disk and run. While this simplicity has its advantages, there are also some disadvantages for users:
- Downloading a 100+ MB zip file over HTTP can be painful on a slow connection
- If you already have some or all of the plug-ins on your local disk, you are downloading content unnecessarily
- More advanced compression techniques can't be used, because there is no opportunity to add the decompression code at the other end
- You must pick a single mirror at the start, and can't switch mirrors in case of failure
- There is no opportunity to check code certificates to ensure the software you are downloading was created by a trusted source
The installer leverages p2's inherent support for multi-threading, pack200 compression, dynamic mirror balancing, and certificate validation to address these problems.
How do I use the installer?
- Get the installer for your platform from the equinox download page. The installer zips are listed under the Provisioning section, once you select your version.
- Unzip the installer anywhere on your local disk, eg.,
/opt/eclipse
- Run the p2 installer executable, eg.,
/opt/eclipse/p2installer
- In the install wizard, select where you want to install the software, eg.,
~/eclipse
- Select whether to do a Stand-alone or Shared install:
- If doing a Stand-alone install, you can delete the installer directory (
/opt/eclipse
) when done, as your target directory (~/eclipse
) will contain a full Eclipse install. - If doing a Shared install, all the shared Eclipse SDK plugins will be stored in a default directory, e.g. (
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\.p2
) on Windows XP.
- If doing a Stand-alone install, you can delete the installer directory (
How do I configure the installer?
The installer uses the Java system property org.eclipse.equinox.p2.installDescription
to fetch the URL of the installer properties file. By default this is set to an installer website.
- Edit the
p2installer.ini
file to point to a local properties file, for exampleinstaller.properties
, like so:
-vmargs -Dorg.eclipse.equinox.p2.installDescription=./installer.properties
- Then
installer.properties
modify the supported properties. In particular you will probably want to change the bundle pool location and the update site you use.
Note also:
You can use an installer.properties file to fetch plugins into the p2.touchpoint.eclipse folder, but you cannot then install those plugins unless they contain a Product (that is, they include a eclipse executable).
The following will work to download the EMF SDK plugins, but will NOT work to install an EMF-enabled Eclipse install, as the sdk.feature.group does not include the Eclipse SDK itself.
eclipse.p2.metadata=http://download.eclipse.org/modeling/emf/updates/releases/ eclipse.p2.artifacts=http://download.eclipse.org/modeling/emf/updates/releases/ eclipse.p2.flavor= eclipse.p2.profileName=EMF SDK eclipse.p2.launcherName=eclipse eclipse.p2.rootId=org.eclipse.emf.sdk.feature.group eclipse.p2.autoStart=true
Supported installer properties
The following properties are currently supported in the install description file:
- eclipse.p2.rootId
- The root Installable Unit to be installed
- eclipse.p2.rootVersion
- The version of the root installable unit to install. If this property is omitted, the installer will select the newest available IU that matches the rootId property.
- eclipse.p2.metadata
- The URL of the metadata repository to install from
- eclipse.p2.artifacts
- The URL of the artifact repository to install from
- eclipse.p2.launcherName
- The name of the application launcher (e.g., eclipse.exe). This is used in conjunction with the autoStart property to launch the installed application
- eclipse.p2.autoStart
- A boolean property specifying if the installed application should be launched immediately after install.
- eclipse.p2.profileName
- A human readable name of the product being installed. This value is used when referring to the product in the installer dialog.
- eclipse.p2.installLocation
- The application instal location. If ommitted, the user is prompted for a location
- eclipse.p2.agentLocation
- The p2 agent data location directory
- eclipse.p2.bundleLocation
- The application bundle pool directory