Hi,
On a more positive note, for the 2019-12 release, the
installer exploits the platform's cool "link handler"
support that was implemented by Matthias Becker; thanks
Lars Vogel for drawing my attention to this gem.
As an example, this means that clicking the following
link can automatically launch the installer, in this case,
initializing it in order to provision a specialized IDE
for contributing to SimRel.
eclipse+installer:https://git.eclipse.org/c/oomph/org.eclipse.oomph.git/plain/setups/interim/SimultaneousReleaseTrainConfiguration.setup
It's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem that you must
first download and register the installer once. To make
this step more self-documenting, I've created a "help"
page that describes how to exploit this feature:
https://www.eclipse.org/setups/installer/?url="">
This page uses the documentation extracted from the
configuration (specified in the query parameter) so that
it's contextually tailored, including all its links.
I've updated the simrel wiki to describe this automated
approach to set up an environment for contributing to
simrel:
https://wiki.eclipse.org/Simrel/Contributing_to_Simrel_Aggregation_Build#Get_the_simrel.build_project
So there isn't really a good excuse not to use the
aggregation editor. Admitted I too typically just edit my
*.aggrcon files actually, but mostly because saving
creates such a big delta. But the editor does have
advantages, i.e., I can see if I pasted the URL
incorrectly and that the IUs resolve correctly. More
importantly, as I mentioned previously, if you're adding a
feature that needs to be in a category or removing a
feature when it or any other feature after it are in a
category, you will break the model if you do this
textually. And there were many such broken links as a
result...
This same mechanism can be used to provision a
development environment with the source for the full
Platform SDK:
https://www.eclipse.org/setups/installer/?url="">
You can do this for your own projects too. One-click
contributions from your community are at you finger tips.
In addition, this same mechanism can also be used to
install marketplace listings, e.g.,
https://www.eclipse.org/setups/installer/?url="">
So the installer now allows users to create an
installation that includes one more additional marketplace
listings as well.
To help make the marketplace listings great again, the
listings are now tested daily. Bad listings give a bad
impression of Eclipse, especially when we provide them
ourselves.
Currently there are 1316
marketplace listings that specify update sites. Of those,
541
have problems; some have minor problems, e.g., it
can't be installed in the versions of Eclipse with
which it's specified to be compatible, but many have
major problems, i.e., the p2 site doesn't exist or
doesn't contain the bundles/features that are required
by the listing. The user perception is that anything
they get from marketplace is "Eclipse" and any problem
with those are "Eclipse" problems...
If you maintain a listing, you can review the test
results for your listing as follows:
https://www.eclipse.org/setups/marketplace/?url="">
For the above listing, we can see that it doesn't
actually install in versions of Eclipse older than Photon
(and we can see why by clicking on the error icons) so it
would be best to improve this listing to exclude those
versions.
Thanks to the Foundation's awesome web designers, a link
to these listing-specific test results is available via
the circled link on your listing's site:
So if you maintain a marketplace listing, please help
make it great too!!
If you have comments, suggestions, or concerns about the
marketplace listing reporting, please do so in:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=550713
If you have comments, suggestions, or concerns about the
installer's web link support, please do so in:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=551315
Regards,
Ed
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