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A Brief Overview of Building at Eclipse
Contents
Summary
This page is about building Eclipse- and RCP-based products (including Eclipse itself). This document is focused on using PDE Build directly by Eclipse projects; work is currently underway to develop a Common Build Infrastructure that should, in the long term, make the build process much easier.
PDE Build
PDE Build is The Way to headlessly build Eclipse- and RCP-based products. The online documentation provides a good foundation of knowledge, but does fall short in on some specifics, including the use of Pack200 and JAR signing using the Eclipse Foundation's certificate. This document addresses these issues.
The following guides are available:
- PDE Build from Markus Barchfeld's Build and Test Automation for plug-ins and features. It's getting a bit old (having been written for eclipse-3.0).
- The Eclipse IDE for Education (IDE4EDU) project's releng project provides a relatively simple example of how PDE Build can be used to build, Pack 200, sign, and create an update site using the Eclipse Foundation's build server.
- Eclipse Headless build with PDE Build - Tutorial by Lars Vogel based on Eclipse 3.4
Build Server
Eclipse projects can use the Eclipse Foundation's build server (build.eclipse.org) to run automated builds. If you're a committer with a shell account, you should already have access to the server. If not, your project lead should send a note to the Eclipse Webmaster. Once you have access to the build.eclipse.org server, you can move your build scripts to the 'shared' directory (i.e. /shared/[top-level project]/[project]/[component]
). For example, the build scripts for the aforementioned IDE4EDU are run from the /shared/technology/soc/ide4edu/releng
directory. If this directory doesn't exist for your project, please ask the webmaster to create it for you.
Hudson
The Hudson build tool is now available . Committers can login with their CVS/SVN credentials.
This Hudson install is being managed by members of the community in the same way that PlanetEclipse is. If you want to start using Hudson to build your Eclipse.org project file a bug requesting a new build job under EclipseFoundation->Community and specify the Hudson component.
For more information, please see Hudson.
Ant
Eclipse itself is built using the PDE build infrastructure that it ships with the Plug-in Development Environment. Ant is used to run the build, with adequate plug-points where in you can perform custom tasks such as instrumentation of code.
To get comfortable with ant:-
http://ant.apache.org/manual - If you are new to ant
Eclipse provides a very usable interface for writing ant files(yes, with auto-complete and the stuff) as well as run the ant files from within the IDE. But, for headless(without UI, from command line) builds, you'll need to use the antRunner application provided by eclipse. For more help, peek into the help documentation of eclipse that you are using.
Plugin Builder plugin
http://www.pluginbuilder.org - Something to make your life even easier
You might get stuck nowhere:-
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=87151
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=139481
Versioning
Plugins (including features and fragments) must specify their own versions as well as the versions of their dependencies appropriately.
Information
See the eclipse team's plugin-versioning guidelines. You can also ask Pascal Rapicault or John Arthorne for their "Plug-in versioning" presentation.
Tooling
Pascal Rapicault has created an application (org.eclipse.core.runtime.versionchecker.dependencyChecker) to "specify the ranges on all [your] required plug-ins."
Cross-platform build
Eclipse RCP applications can be cross-built for several platforms using any platform on which eclipse runs. You just need to install the RCP delta pack in your Target Platform.
What is the "DeltaPack"
Using the "DeltaPack"
The DeltaPack is used to get platform specific artifacts so that you can export your RCP product for multiple platforms.
The preferred way of getting the platform specific artifacts is to just add them to the target platform. There is no need to look-up and download the "DeltaPack" if you follow these instructions.
- Open Window/Preferences.
- Find PDE/Target Platform
- Select your (active) target platform
- Click Edit
- Click Add
- Select "Software Site"
- Click Next
- In "Work With" type: http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/4.3 (replace 4.3 with your current version)
- Check "Eclipse RCP Target Components"
- Check "Equinox Target Components"
- Uncheck "Include required software"
- Check "Include all environments"
- Press Finish
- Press Finish
- Press OK
Open your product file and select the "Export" option. You will see that the "Export for multiple platforms" checkbox is available.
Old way of using the "DeltaPack"
When do you need it
You need it if you want to export your RCP application to multiple targets (a combination of OS/ARCH/WIDGETSET: e.g. linux/ppc64/gtk ). This is typically done from the product configuration file.
How to get it
You can get it from: http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/
Click on any of the builds and look for DeltaPack. Please note that [there are discussions on removing the DeltaPack](https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=419246) and getting it the preferred way.
How to add it to your target platform
- Download the DeltaPack as described above
- Unzip it to a location .e.g. "C:\eclipse-4.4M7-delta-pack"
- Open Window/Preferences.
- Select PDE/Target Platform
- Select your (active) target platform
- Click Edit
- Click Add
- Select "Directory"
- Click Next
- In "Location" type: "C:\eclipse-4.4M7-delta-pack\eclipse"
- Press Next
- Press Finish
- Press Finish
- Press OK
Open your product file and select the "Export" option. You will see that the "Export for multiple platforms" checkbox is available.