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.
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 uncompression 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.
- Unzip the installer anywhere on your local disk
- Run the "p2installer" executable
- In the install wizard, select where you want to install the software
- When finished, you can delete the installer