Re: [p2-dev] Categories

[Andrew Niefer <aniefer@xxxxxxxxxx>]

As a sort of summary of the call, here
is how I see categories

There is a problem currently regarding
category ids/versions.  This is being tracked in https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=261104.
 The proposed solution is that categories have proper unique ids and
versions, and the UI merges based on display name.

As for having special code, I see this
as being unavoidable for UIs.  There is a real need for grouping mechanisms
that don't require you to install the whole group.  A category is
a looser collection of related things, and generally speaking, the user
probably doesn't want everything in a given category.  Strictly speaking
there is no reason why you couldn't install the whole category, so it is
not actually uninstallable, we just don't present them as installable in
the UI.

However, I don't think that categories
should be required to see something in the UI.  You should be able
to list all group IUs (org.eclipse.equinox.p2.type.group
), which I guess is what https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=262009
is about.

-Andrew

Thomas Hallgren <thomas@xxxxxxx>
Sent by: p2-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx

01/26/2009 03:38 PM

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Subject	Re: [p2-dev] Categories

Susan Franklin McCourt wrote:
>
>
> So... the category structure has to be independent of the IU.
> When figuring out how to represent it, using an IU as convenient.
>  However, a category has never been intended to be installable
(see 
> https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=229301).  I realize
> representing it using an IU is misleading to us programmers.  The
UI 
> knows that it's not truly installable, and it does play "tricks"
to 
> merge content from different repos.  
>
The UI present in the IDE is not the only one that need to play tricks
here. All code that deals with the categories will need to do the same.
Our service for instance, will need a lot of special code to cater for
this. All other code that deal with p2 in the future, will also need to
handle this kind of IU's in a special way.

- thomas
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