Introduction
The intent of this tutorial is to assist you in setting up an update site to add plugins/features to mHARP-EQ. The update site is a really nice feature of Eclipse that allows others to add functionality to mHARP-EQ without including them as part of the core platform.
Prerequisites:
- A good understanding of Eclipse Plug-ins and Features
- A good understanding for installing a web server (e.g. Apache)
Assuming that you have a good understanding of the prerequisites, the first thing to do is to go through this Eclipse wiki page that provides very basic instructions for creating an update site.
Updating Feature.xml
There are some parts of the feature.xml that you will want to update. Some of these updates will also be done to the plugin or plugins that are part of the feature.
Overview tab
In the Overview tab, at a minimum you should provide:
- ID - unique id of the feature
- Version - feature version (e.g. 1.0.0.qualifier). See the guidelines here for feature and plugin versioning and when/how to increment.
- Name - feature name, should be an externalized string
- Vender - Name of the vendor providing the plugin (e.g. NCSA). This should be an externalized string.
Information tab
In this section, you should provide users with information about your feature. For example, you should at a minimum provide:
- Feature-Description
- Text - a brief description of the feature and what it contains
- Copyright Notice
- Text - The copyright notice
- License Agreement
- License - Most features will choose local license
- Text - The text of the feature's license
Plug-ins tab
This tab should list all plug-ins and fragments that are packaged in this feature. Optionally, you can specify a specific version.
Dependencies tab
This tab should list the dependent features and/or plug-ins for this feature to be installed. This is useful for mHARP-EQ to determine what dependencies should be satisfied to install the feature. This will prevent incomplete features from being installed and breaking the mHARP-EQ application