[p2-dev] .target File - includeConfigurePhase, includeMode, ...

[Gilles Iachelini <gilles.iachelini@xxxxxxxxx>]

dear fellow readers,

I am currently working with target platform files and we are trying to strip down our dependencies of our RCP application, server components using osgi and many other projects using a target platform.

I am looking for explanations what actually happens when the keywords within the location tag of a .target file like 

- includeConfigurePhase
- includeMode
- includeAllPlatforms
- includeSource
- type

are used. I know, that using includeMode=“slicer” helps to reference, for instance, language fragments, which by nature have a reference to a host bundle, which is not necessarily part of the target platform, but must be available at build/package time. Why does every location must use the “slicer” mode, when one location is using it?

We are using the target platform file in the maven/tycho context to build our applications. There is a self explanatory charm to those attributes, but I have a hard time finding the definitions. Those explanations in the Eclipse Help aren’t very helpful, because they leave out the details.

For example to the “configurePhase” it says:
"Include configure phase is an advanced option to control whether the configure phase of the download operation will be run. The configure phase allows downloaded software to run additional operations. If this causes problems for your software site, this option can be turned off.”

I absolutely don’t want to blame anyone, but “advanced option” and “turn it of( if this causes trouble” isn’t really what I was looking for. I won’t mind a reference to source code. What are these operations and who has it?

All kind of comments are highly appreciated and I promise to collect all these comments and end the mystery of those keywords.


kind regards
Gilles