Equinox p2 Repository Mirroring

Introduction

p2 manages all of its data in repositories. There are two types of repos, artifact and metadata.

p2 artifact repositories can hold many different forms of the same artifact. For example, a JAR artifact may exist as

• a canonical (unmolested) JAR
• a compressed JAR (assuming the original was not compressed)
• a pack200 JAR
• a delta relative to another version of the artifact
• ...

p2 metadata repositories describe inter-component dependencies and identify artifacts to install.

The Repository Mirroring application can be used to mirror artifact and metadata repositories. In addition, users can do selective mirroring of artifacts or metadata either to create a more specific mirror (e.g. only mirror latest code) or merge content into an existing mirror.

This example demonstrates how to mirror a repository using the repository mirror application available in the equinox p2 tools.

Getting the Mirroring Tools

The mirroring application is part of the p2 Agent download available in the provisioning section for a specific build in the Equinox downloads site.

Running the Mirroring Tools

Run from the command line by running the Agent with the args below (e.g. eclipse.exe -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.tools.MirrorApplication -source ...).

For example, to make an exact mirror of a metadata and artifact repositories, use the following arguements. Note that if the target repository does not exist, a new repository is created.

 -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.tools.MirrorApplication
 -source Insert Source URL (e.g. http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/3.4milestones/)
 -destination Insert Destination URL (e.g. file:/tmp/3.4milestonesMirror/)
 -ius all
 -artifacts all

If you want to mirror only the metadata then remove the line: -artifacts all

If only the artifacts are desired then remove the line: -ius all

For a compressed destination repository, add the line: -compressed

and the resulting destination artifact or content xml will be in compressed jar format.

To enable the verbose feature, add the line: -verbose

The mirror app is set to append artifacts by default.

To delete the destination repository before writing, add the line: -overwrite

Selective Mirroring

If only a piece of the source repository should be mirrored, then you can specify the individual components as arguments. For ius the format is

 -ius IU,IU2/Version,IU3/[VersionRange]

For example,

 -ius org.eclipse.sdk.examples.source,org.eclipse.ui.examples.undo.source/3.2.100,org.eclipse.jdt.ui.examples.projects.source /[3.1.0,3.2.0]

If all associated artifacts should be mirrored with the metadata, add the line -artifacts all and each mirrored metadata will also mirror the artifact with it.

For mirroring simple artifact repository selections, the format is

 -artifacts {classifier,iu,version},{classifier,iu,version}

For example,

 -artifacts {osgi.bundle,org.eclipse.swt.examples.browser,3.1.100.v3320c},{osgi.bundle,org.eclipse.sdk.examples.source,3.1.100.v20070605}