[tycho-user] Include file with qualified product version

[Carsten Reckord <reckord@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi there,

I'm building my RCP product unsing Tycho 0.24 and I'm trying to figure 
out if it is possible to add a file to the finished product's root 
folder that contains the exact qualified version of the product IU.

I'm using the jgit timestamp provider to generate reproducible versions. 
Creating a version file with the correct version as part of the build is 
easy. But figuring out how to add it to the final product not so much.

I tried using the root file properties[1] in a build.properties in the 
product project, but this doesn't seem to be supported. It only works in 
feature projects AFAICS. I see a couple of ways to go forward, but none 
of them look particularly appealing:

1. Use root file properties in the product's constituting feature
-> This would allow me to include a file with the feature's version 
quite easily, but it means using the feature's version instead of the 
product's - and that that might have an older qualifier than the product 
itself if the product file was updated.

2. Just use the latest commit of the whole git repository as the build 
qualifier timestamp
-> This would cause the product version to change too often, since the 
repository contains projects that are unrelated to the product

3. Do some ant magic between the materialize-products and 
archive-products goals to add the desired file to the materialized 
product folders before archiving them
-> This works to get the file into the zipped archives. But of course if 
you install the product from a repository (or update it using p2), it 
breaks.

4. Include the file in the product executable zips that I can see in 
target/extraArtifacts. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out, how/when 
those are created and how to get in between that and the repository 
creation to change them before the p2 metadata generation.

Any suggestion?

Best,
Carsten

[1] 
http://help.eclipse.org/juno/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.pde.doc.user/tasks/pde_rootfiles.htm