p2, your savior or your achilles heel? Everything an Eclipse team needs to know about p2

p2, your savioror your Achillesheel?Everything anEclipse teamneeds to knowabout p2!R. Ian BullPascal Rapicault

2 3/21/2011Alternate Titles 10 reasons we closed your p2 bugs as INVALID? 10 ways to get booted from the p2 mailing list! 10 excuses why we didn’t buy you a beer  p2, 10 common pitfalls and how to avoid them.

3 3/21/2011#1Move / remove files on disk Leading cause of p2 failures: developers tampering with plugins/ folder If you no longer need a plugin DO NOT REMOVE IT BY HAND Do not move, unzip or change a plug-in in your plugins/ directory

4 3/21/2011Instead:Let p2 manage your install Other plug-ins may depend on it If a plug-in is no longer needed, p2 will remove it  Run the Garbage Collector manually if you want # ./eclipse –application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.garbagecollector.application

5 3/21/2011#2Unzip your plug-ins over Eclipse Do you provide a zip file for your plugins? Do you instruct your users to unzip over eclipse  We don’t like you! (And we will sabotage your wiki page  )

6 3/21/2011Instead:Provide a repository Repositories can be zipped and downloaded! Users can simply point to the compressed repository to properly install your plug-in Avoid the use of drop-ins too

7 3/21/2011#3Replace published content Neverpublish different content with the same version number!  Do not make a change and use the same version number  Do not build plug-ins as Foo v1.0.0.HEAD You’ll never know what your user runs.

8 3/21/2011Remember:Version / ID pairs are immutable If the Version / ID has not changed, the content hasn’t changed! Always publish new metadata and artifacts for each code change  Use .qualifiers for all bundles / plug-ins and features If you can’t rebuild everything, provide patches to deliver surgical updates

9 3/21/2011Reuse:Tips and Tricks Context repositories build.properties: repoBaseLocation=${buildDirectory}/inputRepositories transformedRepoLocation=${buildDirectory}/transformedRepo Qualifier replacement / bundle reuse  forceContextQualifier: Replaces the qualifier of all your bundles (use build timestamp) Feature patches: http://help.eclipse.org/helios/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclips e.pde.doc.user/guide/tools/project_wizards/new_featur e_patch.htm (or google: eclipse p2 feature patch) 

10 3/21/2011#4Alter a released repository “Release” repositories are serious stuffs!  People will refer to them from their repo to avoid duplicating your content  People will refer to them from their build Removing content from a “release” repo is a felony!

11 3/21/2011Instead:Be mindful of your users / repos Preserve content at the same URL If you put out bad bytes, publish a new version. Don’t remove the old one !  Append new version to existing repo.  Disk is cheap, users not patient (and they’ll blame p2).  For this, use p2 composite repositories. Define clear retention policies  For example, the policies for the SDK http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse_Project_Update_Sites

12 3/21/2011#5Don’t categorize things p2 only shows what’s been categorized Repository designers are responsible for designing their categories Classic consumer / producer problem

13 3/21/2011Remember:Category tricks Use categories !  The category publisher is here to help  Use composite repositories where one of the repo carry the categories Usemeaningful name, and use the description. The feature name is shorter than a tweet.

14 3/21/2011#6Ignore your version ranges Specify a strict dependency on 3.6.1 and wonder why your users can’t install on 3.6.2?  Most illegible p2 error messages are a result of poorly set version ranges

15 3/21/2011Instead:Consider your version ranges Version your packages, bundles and features Use version ranges for dependencies:  Up-to by not including [3.6.0, 3.7.0)  Unbounded lower [0.0.0, 3.7.0)  Unbounded higher 2.0  Strict Versions [3.6.1, 3.6.1] You need to know what the producer does.

16 3/21/2011#7Don’t USE API If you find yourself reaching into internals, ask yourself why? If you manually write to the bundles.info file, ask yourself why? If you edit content.xml / artifacts.xml by hand, ask yourself why? Two problems when you don’t use API:  We could break you  You could break you

17 3/21/2011Instead:Be mindful of what you use Look for provisional API (if real API doesn’t exist) Ask on the p2-mailing list

18 3/21/2011#8Use the Metadata generator If you are using the Metadata generator… sorry  (org.eclipse.equinox.p2.metadata.generator)  Deprecated two years ago  Removed for Indigo

19 3/21/2011Instead:Use the Publisher Publisher Applications & Ant Tasks  Publish from an Update Site  Publish from Features / Bundles  Publish from a Product  Publish categories # ./eclipse -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.publisher.UpdateSitePublisher -metadataRepository file:///repo -artifactRepository file:///repo -source http://foo/site.xml -compress -publishArtifacts

20 3/21/2011#9Use legacy update sites Legacyupdate sites don’t include complete metadata  Features are downloaded before any dependency resolution can occur Biglag at install time. We will blame you for all p2’s performance problems 

21 3/21/2011Instead:Use a real build tool PDE Build, Tycho and derivatives (Athena, Buckminster, etc.) all provide facilities to build p2 repositories. If you can’t change your build technology, at lease use the Update Site Publisher.

22 3/21/2011#10Spell it P2 I don’t call your project Mylin, έMF, or BERT

23 3/21/2011Remember:The project is:

24 3/21/2011Useful links http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox_p2 http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox/p2/Getting_Started http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox/p2/Publisher http://aniefer.blogspot.com/2008/06/example- headless-build-for-rcp-product.html

http://eclipsesource.com	877
http://paper.li	7
http://a0.twimg.com	2
https://twitter.com	1
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	1
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	1

p2, your savior or your achilles heel? Everything an Eclipse team needs to know about p2

by irbull on Mar 23, 2011

Accessibility

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

6 Embeds 889

Statistics

p2, your savior or your achilles heel? Everything an Eclipse team needs to know about p2 — Presentation Transcript