Building plug-ins, fragments and features using update site editor

The update site editor uses the same concepts seen in the other PDE editors. However, it is different from these editors in that it has an additional page that controls how plug-ins, fragments and features in other projects within the workspace are build and placed in the update site project's folders.

Update site editor has a special page call Build:

Feature manifest editor - Overview page

The assumption is that there are features in the workspace that can be built to create feature and plug-in archives as required by the Eclipse update manager. This page maintains the list of these projects that need to be built and also provides buttons to initiate the build.

Update site build setup starts by adding the feature projects that will be built into this site. This is accomplished by using the Add... button. A wizard will be opened with the choice of existing feature projects. Since the update site project can be created outside the particular workspace (and shared among several workspace), some feature entries in this list may have 'shaded' icons. This indicates that a particular feature (id + version) cannot be currently located in the workspace. This is fine, because these features will simply be skipped during the build. This capability allows us to build and maintain portion of the update site in each workspace.

When features are added to the list, they will appear with a checkbox. Each feature in the list will be subject to build, but only checked features will also appear in the site map. This is a very important distinction: features can include other features, and all need to be built and present in the update site, but typically only roots are listed in the map file. When a feature in this list is checked, an entry will be automatically added to the map file (you can see the entry show up in the Outline view and also in the Features page).

Build Control section contains two build buttons: Build and Rebuild All. The former will build features that changed since the last time we pressed the button, while the later will always rebuild all features. If 'Scrub output folders before the build' checkbox is selected, this button will also delete all the archives from the destination folders prior to creating the new ones. Be careful with this checkbox when sharing the update site between multiple workspace, because you don't want to loose archives build by another workspace.

In addition to these two buttons, it is possible to rebuild a single feature by selecting it and selecting the appropriate item from the pop-up menu.

When features are built, the build does not stop at the features themselves. It will also build all the plug-ins and fragments referenced by the features. Built archives (JARs) will be placed in the provided destination folders (features in features, plug-ins/fragments in plugins, respectively).

During the build, a progress monitor dialog will open, displaying build progress. In case of the failure, you can follow the Build Log hyperlink to see what happened.

If you ever wander where all this information shown in the Build page is saved, you can see it in .sitebuild folder in the update site project. This is also the place where the build log file is placed. If you are in Package Explorer view, you may need to turn off the ".*" filter to see the folder.

 

 
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