[jbosside-dev] RE: About feature.xml and bundling plugins (WAS: jBPM Designer feature.xml needs to be updated)

-----Original Message----- From: Max Andersen Sent: donderdag 28 september 2006 6:20 To: Koen Aers; Marshall Culpepper; jbosside-dev(a)lists.jboss.org Cc: Tom Baeyens Subject: Re: About feature.xml and bundling plugins (WAS: jBPM Designer feature.xml needs to be updated) I just got to look at the two feature.xml you are attaching and these are core features.xml - meaning this is what they do...define a feature.xml to represent equinox and rcp. If we were building a complete separate thing, e.g. something that does not need to run in other peoples Eclipse IDE 3.2 then sure we could just redefine the features.xml and plugin.xml as something completely seperate ...but that is not what we are doing, right ? Similar if we were building equinox and rcp based apps I would have a feature.xml that referred to those two (via import not plugin) We are an *IDE* building on top of the eclipse ide core features and those we refer/link to those core features/plugin instead of saying that our feature actually provides them. Our features *only* provides the org.jboss.*/org.hibrnate.*/org.jbpm.*/etc plugins it does not provide org.eclipse.* stuff. Not I'm writing "Our *feature* provides" not "Our *distribution* provides" two *different* things. /max >> >> There are two very different things: >> >> One is what goes into feature.xml that states what your feature >> actually >> *need* and then there is your distribution. >> ... >> The other is distribution which is your feature + what is a good >> default packaging. >> >> Of course we want the last ... > > > In fact this is not true. Eclipse features *are* a packaging mechanism. > A feature does not *need* anything by itself. Only the plugins in the > feature have dependencies on other plugins. See : > http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/*checkout*/platform-core-home > /d > ocuments/plugin-versioning.html?rev=1.2 for a document stating this. > The fact that you will not find any Eclipse project that references > plugins in the feature.xml is due to the fact that they are at the > source and perfectly capable of defining their own packaging units in > which no feature contains plugins that appear also somewhere else in > other features. > As a matter of fact after exploring the different Eclipse projects a > bit I have found evidence that what you say is not true. Have a look > at the attached feature.xml files for the rcp feature and for the > equinox feature and see that they are exactly using the 'evil' way of > doing things. And I am sure that if I look a bit around I will be able > to find plugin providers (that are not part of the Eclipse overall > project) that have also feature.xml files containing references to > third party plugins in the <plugin> tags. > >> This thing we are doing here (with using <plugin> instead of >> <import>) is actually in the same ballpark since it breaks >> updatemanagers and depedency checking. > > Again, I have completely no evidence that this is happening. In fact, > the JIRA issue you mention is happening because the update manager is > looking for particular versions of the plugins stated in the > feature.xml. But you don't have to state these versions in your > feature.xml explicitly. If you do not state them explicitly any > version that is available on the update site will satisfy the requirements. > > Regards, > Koen -- -- Max Rydahl Andersen callto://max.rydahl.andersen Hibernate max(a)hibernate.org http://hibernate.org JBoss a division of Red Hat max.andersen(a)jboss.com