How to consume zipped updatesites in .target files

[phermsdorf]

Hi,

i don't know if the title is actually expressing my problem or the correct approach to solve it, so i'll start to give a bit of background information

Current approach

• .target File which lists several (local) Repositories and references required IU's with their version
• historically there are some re-bundled features with their referenced plugins, like for eclipse rcp or babel features
• historically there a number of own and third party bundles stored on Nexus 2 with these additional p2 plugins from SonaType - everything EOL and/or deprecated
• more and more third party libs are now pulled in by <location ... type="Maven"> - which works very well

Required Change

We are in the need to get rid of that not more supported Nexus 2 Installation with the custom p2 plugins which generates p2 metadata for maven jar's that contain a OSGi MANFEST.MF.

We need to migrate to a plain maven repository manager. Getting rid of additional (local) p2 mirror locations / sites on additional (local) HTTP servers would be very good as well.

Idea

It would be great to transform the current .target location into a zipped p2 repository, deploy that to our maven repository server (could be an additional releng project/script) and consume that for the developers and the tycho build in another .target file for build and development.

What I've tried so far

For me the missing piece seems to be, how to consume the generated p2 site in a .target definition. I've found some exampled where artifacts/bundles of the current build are assembled as p2 repo and then consumed via things like mvn:org.eclipse.tycho.demo:p2-maven-site:1.0.0:zip:p2site, but they reference other maven artifacts via their GAV's where i currently have a full blown .zipped p2 site which i want to use.

My steps:

• Open the Target in Eclipse and use ther Export Button to export the complete Target Definition into a folder (this could probably also be achived by using some mirroring goal or the p2director application etc. )
• i zipped up the contents of this folder/p2 site (eg. with features and plugins folder, and artifacts.jar and content.jar)
• i deployed that .zip file to our maven repository whith something like this:

mvn deploy:deploy-file \
  -DgroupId=com.company \
  -DartifactId=targetplatform \
  -Dversion=2026-04-23-p2-SNAPSHOT \
  -Dpackaging=zip \
  -Dclassifier=p2site \
  -Dfile=tp-2026-04-23-p2.zip \
  -DrepositoryId=company_snapshots \
  -Durl=http://repo.server/nexus/content/repositories/company_snapshots

And now I'm stuck with including that artifact back in another .target definition with all the included IU's etc.
I tried several references like

  <location   type="Maven"  includeAllPlatforms="false">
      <repositories>
        <repository>
          <id>company-snapshots</id>
          <url>http://repo.server/nexus/content/repositories/company_snapshots</url>
        </repository>
      </repositories>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>com.company</groupId>
        <artifactId>targetplatform</artifactId>
        <version>2026-04-23-p2-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <type>zip</type>
        <classifier>p2site</classifier>
      </dependency>
    </location>

or

<location type="InstallableUnit">
  <repository location="jar:http://repo.server/nexus/content/repositories/company_snapshots/
              com/company/targetplatform/2026-04-23-p2-SNAPSHOT/
              targetplatform-2026-04-23-p2-SNAPSHOT-p2site.zip!/"/>
</location>

but none of them seems to work in the IDE - i not even tried it with tycho as long as it's not working in the IDE.

I'm not even sure if i'm on the right track.

Thanks for any hints or ideas on this.

Bye Peter

[phermsdorf]

I'm still investigating further and stumbled about this demo project:
https://github.com/eclipse-tycho/tycho/tree/main/demo/p2-maven-site

However when building that with maven clean install -Dtycho-version=5.0.2 i see that the artifacts are installed in my repo, but when trying to use them i see the following error:

Any idea what the problem could be?

[merks]

Do you have m2e installed in that IDE? I recall having problems too that the "mvn" protocol provider which was so lazily registered that it was not available until I did some other magical thing that forced some bundle to start. But that was long ago and I don't recall the details...

[phermsdorf]

Yes I've m2e installed. See all these little red m2 icon's come from m2e:

[merks]

I assume @laeubi knows the details better than I do. (You checked in the .m2 folder that the thing really exists at those coordinates?)

[phermsdorf]

This doesn't look too bad for me:

(i relocated the m2 repo folder via settings.xml config)

In the error log i see:

java.io.IOException: resolving artifact org.eclipse.tycho.demo:p2-maven-site:zip:p2site:1.0.0 failed
	at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.MvnProtocolHandlerService$MavenURLConnection.connect(MvnProtocolHandlerService.java:178)
	at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.MvnProtocolHandlerService$MavenURLConnection.getInputStream(MvnProtocolHandlerService.java:184)
	at org.eclipse.ecf.provider.filetransfer.browse.URLFileSystemBrowser.runRequest(URLFileSystemBrowser.java:120)
	at org.eclipse.ecf.provider.filetransfer.browse.AbstractFileSystemBrowser$DirectoryJob.run(AbstractFileSystemBrowser.java:72)
	at org.eclipse.core.internal.jobs.Worker.run(Worker.java:63)
Caused by: org.eclipse.core.runtime.CoreException: Resolving artifact failed
	at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.MvnProtocolHandlerService$MavenURLConnection$1.call(MvnProtocolHandlerService.java:173)
	at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.MvnProtocolHandlerService$MavenURLConnection$1.call(MvnProtocolHandlerService.java:1)
	at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.embedder.MavenExecutionContext.executeBare(MavenExecutionContext.java:462)
	at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.embedder.MavenExecutionContext.execute(MavenExecutionContext.java:342)
	at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.embedder.MavenExecutionContext.execute(MavenExecutionContext.java:281)
	at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.MvnProtocolHandlerService$MavenURLConnection.connect(MvnProtocolHandlerService.java:161)
	... 4 more
Caused by: org.eclipse.aether.resolution.ArtifactResolutionException: The following artifacts could not be resolved: org.eclipse.tycho.demo:p2-maven-site:zip:p2site:1.0.0 (absent): org.eclipse.tycho.demo:p2-maven-site:zip:p2site:1.0.0 was not found in http://repo.intern/nexus/content/repositories/qualitype_repos during a previous attempt. This failure was cached in the local repository and resolution is not reattempted until the update interval of qualitype has elapsed or updates are forced
	at org.eclipse.aether.internal.impl.DefaultArtifactResolver.resolve(DefaultArtifactResolver.java:473)
	at org.eclipse.aether.internal.impl.DefaultArtifactResolver.resolveArtifacts(DefaultArtifactResolver.java:261)
	at org.eclipse.aether.internal.impl.DefaultArtifactResolver.resolveArtifact(DefaultArtifactResolver.java:243)
	at org.eclipse.aether.internal.impl.DefaultRepositorySystem.resolveArtifact(DefaultRepositorySystem.java:278)
	at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.MvnProtocolHandlerService$MavenURLConnection$1.call(MvnProtocolHandlerService.java:168)
	... 9 more
Caused by: org.eclipse.aether.transfer.ArtifactNotFoundException: org.eclipse.tycho.demo:p2-maven-site:zip:p2site:1.0.0 was not found in http://repo.intern/nexus/content/repositories/qualitype_repos during a previous attempt. This failure was cached in the local repository and resolution is not reattempted until the update interval of qualitype has elapsed or updates are forced
	at org.eclipse.aether.internal.impl.DefaultUpdateCheckManager.newException(DefaultUpdateCheckManager.java:225)
	at org.eclipse.aether.internal.impl.DefaultUpdateCheckManager.checkArtifact(DefaultUpdateCheckManager.java:201)
	at org.eclipse.aether.internal.impl.DefaultArtifactResolver.gatherDownloads(DefaultArtifactResolver.java:586)
	at org.eclipse.aether.internal.impl.DefaultArtifactResolver.performDownloads(DefaultArtifactResolver.java:525)
	at org.eclipse.aether.internal.impl.DefaultArtifactResolver.resolve(DefaultArtifactResolver.java:449)
	... 13 more

Of course it's not on our internal repository server, since I've build with install and not deploy .... maybe that's the problem.

I would have expected that it looks in the local repo in the first place ...

[laeubi]

First a target itself is not an update-site. If you have a zip and deploy that to a maven repository you can consume it in another target using the mvn: protocol, this is independent on how the site is build.

[laeubi]

Can you share a complete runnable example? That would be easier to look at...

[phermsdorf]

Please find a sample project here. Run with mvn verify
maven-target-site-generator-example.zip

Thanks for looking into the problem.
Bye Peter

[phermsdorf]

@laeubi were you able to have a look at the example project? I'm a bit stuck at the moment ...
Thx!

[laeubi]

I have done a quick look but I think for it to work like you expected you need to use the target-platform packaging type, currently you use jar what itself should not have any special meaning of a target platform at all so nothing will be mirrored.

See also

• Bug: 5982 Fix spurious error and improve mirror-target-platform for non-Tycho projects #6051

Beside that, if it is crucial to your business you can find dedicated support options for Tycho here:
https://github.com/eclipse-tycho/tycho#getting-support

[phermsdorf]

After changing the packaging to <packaging>eclipse-target-definition</packaging> the mirroring works as expected!

Thanks @laeubi !