Packaging Eclipse Components

Eclipse components are delivered as archive files. Each archive contains a collection of features and plug-ins. Typically the archives contain all the functions that a particular component has to offer. It is often the case that consumers either need more than one component and/or only need parts of some components. Without assistance, consumers would have to manually fetch the archives containing the superset of the functionality they need and then manually extract the required features and plug-ins. This can be a laborious and error prone process.

Fortunately, PDE contains a batch oriented mechanism, the packager, which can help. In short, the packager takes as input a list of archives containing features and a list of interesting features. It then fetches the zips, extracts the features (and their plug-ins) and repackages them into an output zip.

Quick Start

Below is a set of basic steps to get started with the packager.  It is suggested that you build *nix packages on a *nix machine to ensure that file permissions are preserved.

  1. Create a packaging configuration directory and copy the template files (packager.properties, packaging.properties, and customTargets.xml) from org.eclipse.pde.build/templates/packager here.
  2. Edit the copied packager.properties files and set the following properties:
  3. Get packager map files.  The following properties control downloading the map files:
    The packager script will concatenate all *.map files found in ${downloadDirectory}. To download more than one map file, or to fetch them from CVS edit the customTargets.xml file and change the getMapFiles target.
  4. Run the packager using the following command:
    java -jar <eclipse install>/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_<version>.jar -application org.eclipse.ant.core.antRunner 
    -buildfile <<eclipse install>/plugins/org.eclipse.pde.build_<version>/scripts/package.xml>
    -DpackagingInfo=<path to your packaging configuration directory>

Packager Map File Format

The packager map files are used to describe the various archives, their content and where they can be downloaded from.  They are similar to the map files used in the build process to fetch bundles from repositories.  The format of a packager map file entry is as follows:
archiveName = url | [configList] | [directory] | contentDescription | componentName

Note that configList and directory are optional, it is important that the appropriate number "|" separators are still used.
Examples:
eclipse-SDK-3.1-win32.zip=https://download.eclipse.org/downloads/drops/R-3.1-200506271435/ | win32,win32,x86 | | sdk | eclipse
eclipse-PDE-3.1.zip=https://download.eclipse.org/downloads/drops/R-3.1-200506271435/ | | | runtime | pde

Packager Configuration Properties

The following properties can be set in the packager configuration packager.properties file:
baseDirectory
The directory in which all the packaging will take place
workingDirectory
The directory in which the scripts will be generated.  The value in the template is ${baseDirectory}/workingPlace
downloadDirectory
The folder to which the archives will be downloaded.  The value in the template is ${baseDirectory}/toPackage
tempDirectory
The folder that the archives will be extracted to.  The value in the template is ${baseDirectory}/temp
featurePaths
The name of the root of the archives downloaded.  The value in the template is eclipse.
featureList
A comma separated list of feature ids that you wish to repackage.
componentFilter
A comma separated list of the components from which the features in featureList can be found.  This filters the available archives and allows the packager to optimize the set of files downloaded.
contentFilter
A comma separated list of content types to fetch.  This filters the set of available archives and allows the packager to optimize the set of files downloaded.
config
An "&" separated list of configs (comma separated triples of operating system, windowing system, architecture) to repackage.  (eg: win32, win32, x86 & linux, gtk, x86)
archivesFormat
The formats of the archives.  An "&" separated list of config - format.  (eg: win32, win32, x86 - antZip & linux, gtk, ppc - tar).  If no archive format is specified for a given config, the default format is antZip.
zipargs
Extra arguments to be passed to zip
unzipargs
Extra arguments to be passed to unzip
archivePrefix
The prefix of the resulting archive(s)
collectingFolder
The name of the root folder of the resulting archive.
buildId
Controls the build id in the default name of the archive.
buildType
Type of the build, used in naming the build output.  Typically one of I, N, M, S, ...
buildLabel
Label for the build.  The template value is ${buildType}.${buildId}
archiveNamePrefix
Control the name of the resulting archive.  The default value of this is ${buildId}
packagingProperties
A relative path to the file containing the properties packaging root files..  By default this points to packaging.properties.
deltaPack
Whether or not to generate a delta pack.  This will exclude platform independent pieces and will group all configs into one archive.
unzipOrder
a comma separated list of archive name prefixes setting the order in which archives should be extracted.

Packaging Root Files

In the packager configuration packager.properties file, the property packagingProperties points to a property file which specifies the root files that need to be packaged.  By default this is the file packaging.properties.

This property file should contain the properties specifying the required root files.  See the Feature specific properties page for details on the root properties.