Deploying a plug-in

During the design phase, plug-ins and fragments in your workspace are used as-is so that you can quickly test and debug. Once you reach the stage where you are satisfied with your code, you need to publish it in a form fit for delivery on the platform.   

The easiest way to do so is through the 'Export Plug-ins and Fragments' Wizard.  It shields you from ant scripts and does not pollute your workspace with resources generated during the build operations:

  1. Select File>Export...>Deployable plug-ins and fragments
  2. Select the plug-ins and fragments you want to export.  The 'single deployable ZIP file' option will create one zip file containing all the selected plug-ins and fragments, which can be directly unzipped into any Eclipse product.  The 'individual JAR archives' option will create a jar file for every selected plug-in and fragment.  The jar files are named according to the format: <plug-in id>_<plug-in version>.jar

Export plug-ins and fragments wizard

  

An alternate way is to build a plug-in or a fragment manually:

  1. Select the plugin.xml file for your plug-in (or the fragment.xml file for your fragment) and choose 'Create Ant Build File'.  This will create a build.xml file.
  2. Select the build.xml file and choose 'Runt Ant...'.  This will open the Ant build script wizard.
  3. Choose the target(s) of your choice and then press 'Run'.

Ant launch wizard

 

You can also package your plug-in(s) and fragment(s) into a feature.  This lets you use the platform Install and Update Manager to deliver your feature.  You can make it available on a server and publish the URL. The platform Update Manager can be used to download and install your feature.

The remaining sections describe features and how to build them.

 
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