Equinox p2 M1

Milestone 1, as the name implies, is our first step towards a new provisioning system for Eclipse. We have hit most of the major items on the M1 plan except for roll-back support. Most importantly however is that the meta-goal of self-provisioning is at hand. That is, the new provisioning support allows people to install and manage the Eclipse environment they use to develop the provisioning system itself! AKA "eating your own dog food".

So, what should you expect from Milestone 1.

• First, don't get your hopes up too high. Most of what we have accomplished is buried well under the covers. We have be laying a new foundation for a flexible and extensible provisioning platform.
• With M1 you are able to install and uninstall individual bundles as well as groups of bundles and whole Eclipse product installs (e.g., we supply a packaging of the Eclipse SDK).
• You can start from scratch and install a complete Eclipse SDK and then add to it or remove from it using the agent. Note that since the supplied SDK is just a packaging of 3.3, it does not include the new provisioning support. Of course, you can use the provisioning agent to add provisioning support to

the SDK :-)

• The Admin UI is just that, a UI intended for administrators, not end-users. The end-user UI will start to take shape during M2.

New and Noteworthy

In a sense it is all new... In any event, here are a few highlights of the new infrastructure:

• There is a little RCP application you can use to create and manage your profiles. The same capabilities are also exposed through a text console.
• The agent allows you to manage the profile you are running as well as other profiles.
• The new support is a complete replacement for Update Manager. Notice that in the fully functional Admin UI application there are no Update Manager bundles. Sigh: turns out there is one but that was a mistake. It is not needed/used (see [https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=198766 Bug 198766)
• There are simple, lightweight APIs for manipulating and managing profiles.

Getting started

Sound interesting? For those who want to learn more, try it or get involved, we've put together a series of guides that will help you along the path. These documents will continue to fill out and evolve with the provisioning support.

Getting Started and User Guides

• Getting started with M1
• Equinox Provisioning Admin UI Users Guide
• Equinox Provisioning Console Users Guide
• Equinox Provisioning Getting Started for Developers
• Equinox Provisioning Bugs n Blunders

Speaking of bugs and blunders, it is very early days for the provisioning support and the road will be bumpy in spots. Your ideas, insights, bug reports and contributions are what will make this effort a success. Please direct comments to the equinox-dev@eclipse.org mailing list and bug reports to the Eclipse/Equinox/Incubator bugzilla bucket (use [prov] in the summary line).