Part 12 of my Galileo Reviews around Target Platforms. An Overview of this blog series can be found here.
As many of you already know, I’m developing OSGI Enterprise Applications, so much of my work uses Target Platforms heavyly. My projects are also model-driven using openArchitectureWare (oAW). My work is based on Open Source where possible – not only Eclipse Projects, also 3rdParty like Easybeans.
I like it to test my projects against newest I-Builds, N-Builds etc. for both: my IDE and my Target Platforms.
Before Galileo came out it was a nightmare to manage this all. My main job is to get progress with my projects (== satisfsy my customers) and not to manage updates – so in the past I waited until M6 or M7 EPP packages are ready before doing my daily work with next Eclipse release.
Galileo will change this for me: all the progress happened in Galileo and the much more easy-to-manage target platforms I’ll start using Helios (Eclipse 3.6) much earlier (from M1 or so).
If you have read all parts of this blog series around Target Platforms you have seen what’s now possible and how easy it is to change / undo configurations.
Experiences following Eclipse 3.5 Milestones: Updatesites
One of the most important things is to know where the P2 Updatesites are – you should do a first stop at http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse_Project_Update_Sites:
And there’s also my collection of Update Sites (3.5, 3.6, 3rdParty) : https://ekkescorner.wordpress.com/eclipse/update-sites/
I jumped on the Eclipse 3.5 Galileo train as M7 came out. Then at first I tried out the Milestones, something later the I-Builds and then the N-Builds and all works well. If I ran into a problem, then I always could Revert the installation or Uninstall a fetaure and try the next Build. I described in my previous blogs how you can do this.
This was the IDE part – and it really was some fun to watch the Cocoa and OSX 64-bit progress and to watch the work from PDE UI team. Using the Milestones so early for daily work of cause was great to detect bugs – some of them I would never have seen if only doing some tests of new features. This means: I would have noticed them perhaps too late. So for me the extra work to write Bugzillas and to isolate problems ( and sometimes fight against responses from bug-owners like “at my site all works well” 😉 – it was worth the time.
Experiences following Eclipse 3.5 Milestones: Updating your Target Platform
The other part was the Runtime ( == Target Platform). Of course to my customers normaly I don’t send products containing N-Builds 😉 But its good to test early if the products run with newest builds. Galileo is the first Eclipse release enabling me to test my Target Platforms easy with “Target Platform Definitions” containing I-Builds and N-Builds.
Its now so easy to duplicate a definition, to switch between different definitions and run launch configs using different target platform definitions.
You want to use the newest I-Build ? the newest N-Build ? in your Target Platform ?
No Problem 🙂
Beside your Target Platform Definitions using the last Release, you also should define Target Platforms using Software Sites of Milestones, I-Builds and N-Builds.
Then its simple to run the latest:
- Activate your Target Platform Definition (if its not already running)
- Hit Reload ! This is the important step: Now PDE (P2) goes to all Update – Software Sites your target definition contains and tries to get the newest Versions.
- Hit OK – Your Workspace will be compiled against the Target Platform.
Now you’re working against the newest builds. For some 3rdParty I have to use Directories to place the Bundles. But its much less then in Ganymede, because in Galileo I can use much more Updatesites. (Mostly because Duplicates are no problem in Galileio).
HowTo follow early Helios (Eclipse 3.6)
If course it’s a very early time to follow Helios 😉 Think I have to wait some weeks and will blog about it later.
The next part of this blog series will be a summary and overview of this blog series around target platforms. Then this series is finished.
Before writing my Galileo reviews of PDE enhancements I’ll blog about the move of openArchitectureWare (oaw) under eclipse umbrella: I have to convert my huge MDSD projects.
mobile && more 