[cross-project-issues-dev] Releng & p2: The old metadata generator is go

[Andrew Niefer <aniefer@xxxxxxxxxx>]

If you are involved with generating
p2 metadata please read this..

In 3.4, the bundle org.eclipse.equinox.p2.metadata.generator
was used for generating p2 metadata for products and update sites.
This was deprecated in 3.5 in favor
of org.eclipse.equinox.p2.publisher.  Now in 3.6 we want to get rid
of the old metadata generator.

This is tracked by https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=291696,
anyone interested should CC/comment there.

The metadata generator exposed two entry
points: an ant task, and a command line application.

<p2.generator>
ant task.
 This task was used by PDE/Build
for builds defining "p2.generate.metadata=true".
 In 3.6M5, PDE/Build was changed to use its own implementation of
this task which uses the publisher.  The replacement task was temporarily
named "p2.new.generator", starting with the next Integration
build (I20100216) this replacement will be renamed to "p2.generator"
and the metadata.generator will no longer provide the ant task.

We don't expect many people were using
this ant task directly since it was not fully documented and would have
been considered very advanced.  However, any releng builds defining
"p2.generate.metadata=true" will be using this under the covers.
 Releng teams are asked to try 3.6M5,(or if you are using the task
directly, next week's IBuild, or "p2.new.generator" from 3.6M5).

org.eclipse.equinox.p2.metadata.generator.EclipseGenerator
application
This command line application was documented
in the help[1] and on the wiki[2].  It is used to generate a p2 repository
from an old update manager site, from a group of feature and plugins, or
an existing product.  These are equivalent applications to do each
of these in the publisher[3][4].

This application still exists in M5,
but by M6 we will replace the implementation under the covers to use the
equivalent publisher application.  If you are using these applications,
please CC yourself on the bug to track the progress.

Both of these changes should be transparent
 and require no changes by releng teams, we are just asking teams
to try it out to ensure we haven't introduced any problems.

-Andrew

[1] http://help.eclipse.org/ganymede/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/p2_metadata_generator.html
[2] http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox_p2_Metadata_Generator
[3] http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox/p2/Publisher
[4] http://help.eclipse.org/galileo/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/p2_publisher.html