Under git://git.eclipse.org/gitroot/tycho/org.eclipse.tycho-demo.git you find a demo of the Tycho build system for Eclipse.

Aim

Eclipse is notorious for being be difficult to build projects via the command line. The so called “headless build” have made me (Niklaus Giger) loose to many hours.

Therefore I decided to look for a simple, easy to use system and I hope that using Apache Buildr I can make a headless build of an Eclipse application as simple like this.

buildr —generate /path/to/project
cd /path/to/project
buildr osgi:clean:dependencies osgi:resolve:dependencies osgi:install:dependencies
buildr

And it would be even better if the osgi is integrated and not necessary any more.

A lot of the proposals here come from the lessons learned how to port a real Eclipse based RCP application from a custom ant script into a new project elexis-bootstrap based on Apache Buildr.

Obstacles

• javadoc
  • should generate javadoc in all sub-project and put the output into the top/target/doc/javadocs

• buildr4osgi
  • integrate into buildr? (Would be a lot simpler)
  • use Java class org.osgi.framework.Version (instead of buildr4osgi). Drawback: would not support any other ruby than jruby
    Why? buildr4osgi does not catch these illegal values (when trying to build a p2site with Eclipse Helios)
• 2.1.6alpha.20120928
• 2.1.6a.20120928
• 2.1.6.alpha.20120928
• 2.1.7-20120929
  • MANIFEST.MF with local.jar as first entry produce errors. Fix lib/buildr4osgi/osgi/packaging.jar (line 280)
    If an eclipse plugin nature use entry == ‘.’.

• izpack (improve upon buildrizpack. See also Doc)
  • integrate
  • howto handle EclipseP2 applications

• Eclipse target definitions
  • detect them via finding the corresponding *.target definitions
  • translate a sub.project/demo.target into a task root:sub.project:demo.target
    (e.g. ./itp04-rcp/target-definition/helios.target)

• Eclipse applications
  • must probably be defined/detected via a corresponding *.product file
  • translate a sub.project/demo.product into a task root:sub.project:demo.product
    (e.g. ./itp03-crossplatform/org.tycho.demo.crossplatform.rcp/org.tycho.demo.crossplatform.rcp.product
    and ./itp04-rcp/eclipse-repository/example.product)
  • howto write unit tests (even the smallest elexis builds with just a handful projects take 2 minutes)
  • Clean-up the mess in buildfile.project!

• JUnit test should be run in all sub-directories and output placed into the top target/doc/junit

• PDE tests test should be run in all sub-directories and output placed into the top target/doc/junit
  • PDE tests probably can only be correctly detected and run when a corresponding *.launch is found

• defining meaningfull and not too long lasting rspecs for all the stuff above!

• Building is slow. Parsing the everything takes often 5 or more minutes.

Progress

• Apache Buildr 1.4.8 will support a very limited recognition of Eclipse workspaces. (as of Oct. 2 2012)
• Elexis-Bootstrap will be used for the upcoming Elexis version 2.1.7 (as of Oct. 2 2012)

Help/comment/critics are always welcomed by the author Niklaus Giger (niklaus.giger@member.fsf.org)