| <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> |
| <html lang="en"> |
| <head> |
| <meta name="copyright" |
| content="Copyright (c) 2006, 2015 IBM Corporation and others. This page is made available under license. For full details see the LEGAL in the documentation book that contains this page."> |
| <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> |
| <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> |
| <link rel="STYLESHEET" href="../guide/book.css" type="text/css"> |
| <title>Building an RCP application from a product configuration file</title> |
| </head> |
| <body> |
| <h1>Building an RCP application from a product configuration file</h1> |
| <p>PDE Build comes with infrastructure to build a complete RCP |
| application from a product configuration file. Most of the setup |
| necessary for such a build can be done through a few modifications to |
| the template build.properties provided in PDE build. The |
| following section focuses on setting up a simple product build assuming |
| that all plug-ins and features (both to build and pre-built) referenced |
| by the product file are |
| already locally available on disk.<br> |
| </p> |
| <h2>Basic setup</h2> |
| <p> |
| The first step in setting up a build is to create the directory in |
| which the build will take place. |
| This directory will be referred to as the <i>build directory</i> and |
| will contain the plug-ins and features |
| to build as well as all the generated artifacts. Next, copy your |
| plug-ins and |
| features respectively into "plugins" and "features" subdirectories. |
| Your |
| product configuration file is expected to be in one of these |
| plugins/features. |
| </p> |
| The second step in setting up a build is to copy the template |
| build.properties file from |
| org.eclipse.pde.build/templates/headless-build to a new directory which |
| will be the build configuration directory (also referred to as the <i>configuration |
| directory</i>). |
| Edit the copied build.properties file and set the following properties:<br> |
| <ul> |
| <li><span style="font-weight: bold;">product</span>: the location of |
| your product configuration file in the form "<code>/<plug-in or |
| feature id>/path/to/.product</code>"</li> |
| <li><span style="font-weight: bold;">baseLocation</span>: the |
| location of an eclipse install containing all the pre-built features |
| and plug-ins |
| that your product requires in features/ and plugins/ |
| subdirectories. The org.eclipse.equinox.executable feature (it is available |
| from the eclipse p2 repository) is mandatory as it includes the |
| org.eclipse.platform.launchers feature which |
| contains the launchers and root files necessary for a product.</li> |
| <li><span style="font-weight: bold;">buildDirectory</span>: the |
| directory the build will take place in. Set this to the full path |
| of the build directory created |
| previously.</li> |
| <li><span style="font-weight: bold;">configs</span>: list the |
| configurations for which you want your product to be built. You can |
| uncomment the configuration(s) provided (be careful of the line |
| continuations).</li> |
| <li><span style="font-weight: bold;">archivePrefix</span>: the name |
| of the directory of your product once installed on disk.</li> |
| </ul> |
| <h3>Overview of the directory structure</h3> |
| <pre><buildDirectory>/<br> plugins/<br> pluginToBuildA<br> pluginToBuildB<br> myProduct.product<br> ...<br> features/<br> featureToBuild<br> ...<br><br><buildConfiguration>/<br> build.properties<br><br><baseLocation><br> plugins/<br> org.eclipse.core.runtime<br> org.eclipse.ui<br> ...<br> features/<br> org.eclipse.rcp<br> org.eclipse.platform.launchers<br> ...<br> <br></pre> |
| <h2>Running the build</h2> |
| To run the build you will use the org.eclipse.ant.core.antRunner |
| application. When invoking eclipse with this application to |
| perform a build you need to set two arguments on the command line:<br> |
| <ul> |
| <li><code>-buildfile </path/to/productBuild.xml></code>: |
| This is |
| the path to |
| the productBuild.xml provided by pde build. It is located in the |
| org.eclipse.pde.build/scripts/productBuild directory. This is the |
| build file |
| that drives the whole product build process.</li> |
| <li><code>-Dbuilder=</path/to/configuration folder></code>: |
| This is |
| the path to the build configuration folder.</li> |
| </ul> |
| Run the antRunner application using the following command:<br> |
| <div style="text-align: center;"> |
| <div style="text-align: left;"> |
| <div style="margin-left: 40px;"><code>java -jar |
| <eclipseInstall>/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_<version>.jar -application |
| org.eclipse.ant.core.antRunner -buildfile |
| <<eclipseInstall>/plugins/org.eclipse.pde.build_<version>/scripts/productBuild/productBuild.xml> |
| -Dbuilder=<path to the build configuration folder></code><br> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <h2>Advanced scenarios</h2> |
| <p>Behind the scenes this setup will generate a feature containing the |
| plug-ins or features specified in your product configuration file. |
| This generated feature is then used to drive a normal feature based |
| headless build. If you require more customization of the build, |
| i.e. fetching from a repository, see the Advanced |
| PDE Build topics for |
| more information. |
| </p> |
| </body> |
| </html> |
