The Spaces team has set up a chat "support center" on IRC (irc.mainloop.net, channel "spaces") to help out if you get stuck. (If you depart from the explicitly supported use cases, there’s a good chance you will. After all, you're using M1 code!)

We're manning the support channel roughly 24/7 from March 6 through the end of EclipseCon. You'll need an IRC client to reach us: we suggest ECF, Chatzilla or Trillian. If you're using Chatzilla, enter url irc://irc.mainloop.net/spaces in the Firefox browser url and you'll be live on IRC.

How to Publish to a Space

Want to publish and share your Eclipse plug-in with others?

Plug-ins can be published at Spaces as binary-only (just the executable plug-in for installation in Eclipse), or source-only (just the source code for materialization in an Eclipse workspace), or both.

Publishing a Binary Plug-in

To publish your binary plug-in at a Space:
  1. Install the Spaces plug-in in your Eclipse.
  2. Create a Provider Account
    Different providers have different mechanisms for creating an account. As an example, we will step through creating an account with the AOL XDrive provider.
    1. Go to http://www.xdrive.com/
    2. "Sign up free" ... follow the instructions
    3. Remember your username and password
  3. Use the Spaces Publish menu item
    Right-click context menu on a Java plug-in project.
  4. Select a Space
  5. Add a New Space (optional)
    If you don't have a Space defined yet, add a new space. For this example, we're using the AOL XDrive provider, so enter your user name and password.
  6. Select the Update Site Publishing Operation
    There are many different ways to publish your plug-in. In this example, we're going to publish an Eclipse update site.
  7. Choose the Update Site within the Space
    Each Space can contain multiple update sites, so choose (or, if needed, create and then choose) the update site you want to publish to.
  8. Save the URL
    When the publishing is complete, the Spaces provider gives you a unique URL to access your Space and update site.
  9. Publicize your Space
    Send the unique URL to your friends and colleagues, publish in your blog, print it on a billboard, sky write it from an airplane -- what ever you want. After a minute or two to allow the provider's servers to synchronize, your friends and colleagues can use your URL per the "how to consume" instructions.
  10. Manipulating the Files
    • For other file operations such as deleting files or writing a nice README for your users, use the provider's direct tools. For example, for the AOL XDrive provider, go to the http://www.xdrive.com/ site, login, and use the "Manage My XDrive" application.

Publishing a Source Plug-in

To publish your source plug-in at a Space:
  1. Save Your Project in a Subversion Repository
    The Spaces M1 does not publish your project to the source code repository itself - that is an M2 feature. Thus your first step is to use Team > Share Project and store your project in an SVN source repository.

  2. Publish to your Space
    Publish your project to your Space, just as described above, and the Spaces Extended update site will be annotated with the source code repository information. This extended update site allows the Spaces import wizard to materialize the source project and/or install the binary plug-ins.
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