See below for my answers...
On 23 February 2016 at 03:32, David M Williams
<david_williams@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> no, an upgrade
from the old structure to the new structure is unfortunately not supported
The EPP packages will still have a product
definition and feature, right? I'd think that would suffice to update across
yearly releases. (...)
Yes, there is still a product definition and a feature, and without such a major structural change I'd say that an upgrade makes sense in the future.
Right now all package products include their own package feature, the common EPP feature with additional dependencies, and the Eclipse Platform feature directly, i.e. those three are not root features and cannot be uninstalled. To me this sounds like the best approach because without any of those features, especially the Eclipse Platform feature, Eclipse won't start. And updating the Eclipse Platform without updating the underlying EPP product isn't anything we'd like to propose to anyone. A bug that is so severe that it deserves an update of the Eclipse Platform should result in a rebuild of the packages.
All other dependencies are 'root' features now, except a few cases where something was optional and defined in a p2.inf file.