Improvements Eclipse Installation

[sami wagiaalla]

Hi,

The way we currently install Eclipse plugins in Fedora is incorrect and 
somewhat fragile.

RPM places all the plugin artifacts in the proper directories. However 
that does not update the eclipse metadata. This means that until the 
next time eclipse starts it is unaware of the newly installed plugins.

Because the user would normally run Eclipse not as root Eclipse does not 
have permission to write to the meta data files located in the 
installation directory. It therefore creates a parallel version in the 
user's home directory ~/.eclipse. This creates a fragile installation 
and leads to a whole host of problems.

To improve this I have written apatch which runs the Eclipse reconciler 
during rpm installation. The Eclipse reconciler is an Eclipse 
application which goes through and checks the installation directories 
and updates the eclipse metadata with any newly installed plugins.

To add support for this in your eclipse package you have to add the 
following line to your rpm spec file:

%_eclipse_pkg [package name]

Here is an example from the eclipse-rse spec file for the
eclipse-rse-sdk rpm:

%package   sdk
[...]
%_eclipse_pkg sdk

The above macro expands to the following:

%post sdk
touch /var/run/eclipse/run-reconciler

%postun sdk
touch /var/run/eclipse/run-reconciler

if [ $1 == 0 ]; then
   eclipse-reconciler.sh
fi

%posttrans sdk
eclipse-reconciler.sh

I apologize if you have experienced instability in Eclipse installations 
on rawhide, it is probably due to these changes. Please let me know if 
you have any comments questions or suggestions.

I will be filing a request to update the Eclipse packaging guidelines.

If you are interested in the details of the work, here is a summary in 
the form of a patch: http://fpaste.org/pPEC/

Cheers,
   Sami

[Orion Poplawski]

On 10/26/2011 09:20 AM, sami wagiaalla wrote:
>  To add support for this in your eclipse package you have to add the
>  following line to your rpm spec file:
>
>  %_eclipse_pkg [package name] 
For what Fedora versions is this applicable to?


-- 
Orion Poplawski
Technical Manager                     303-415-9701 x222
NWRA/CoRA Division                    FAX: [phone]
3380 Mitchell Lane                  orion(a)cora.nwra.com
Boulder, CO 80301              http://www.cora.nwra.com

[sami wagiaalla]

On 10/26/2011 11:37 AM, Orion Poplawski wrote:
>  On 10/26/2011 09:20 AM, sami wagiaalla wrote:
> > To add support for this in your eclipse package you have to add the
> > following line to your rpm spec file:
> >
> > %_eclipse_pkg [package name]
>
>  For what Fedora versions is this applicable to?
>  
rawhide (f17)

[sami wagiaalla]

>  I will be filing a request to update the Eclipse packaging
> guidelines.
>  
Hi Everybody,

Now that the new packaging guidelines have been approved 
(https://fedorahosted.org/fpc/ticket/122) it will soon be time to 
implement these improvements in all Eclipse packages. The official 
packaging guidelines page will be update soon but for now a summary of 
the reconciler solution can be found here: 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Swagiaal/NewEclipsePackagingGuideline...

This will be a great improvement in Eclipse installation experience on 
Fedora. It will get rid of bugs like this: 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=760454 and its elk.

One issue is that the reconciler is all-or-nothing so it will install 
all plugins found; even ones which do not have the solution implemented. 
This can lead to issues when those packages have updates to offer. So 
for best results it we should implement this in all packages at once.

The list of all packages which provide Eclipse plugins is at the end of 
this message. If you own one of these packages or are just interested in 
helping with this please watch this thread. I will be sending out 
instructions on what needs to be done and how to test it. I have 
requested a custom Koji tag to do this work 
(https://fedorahosted.org/rel-eng/ticket/5021) so I will send out the 
message as soon as that is approved. The goal is to finish this before 
f17 branches from rawhide.

Cheers!
   Sami

The list of packages:

eclipse
eclipse-anyedit
eclipse-avr
eclipse-birt
eclipse-callgraph
eclipse-cdt
eclipse-changelog
eclipse-checkstyle
eclipse-cmakeed
eclipse-collabnet-merge
eclipse-demos
eclipse-dltk
eclipse-dtp
eclipse-eclemma
eclipse-eclox
eclipse-egit
eclipse-emf
eclipse-emf-query
eclipse-emf-transaction
eclipse-emf-validation
eclipse-epic
eclipse-fedorapackager
eclipse-findbugs
eclipse-gcov
eclipse-gef
eclipse-gprof
eclipse-jgit
eclipse-linuxprofilingframework
eclipse-m2m-qvtoml
eclipse-manpage
eclipse-mdt-ocl
eclipse-mdt-uml2
eclipse-mercurial
eclipse-moreunit
eclipse-mpc
eclipse-mylar
eclipse-mylyn
eclipse-mylyn-builds
eclipse-mylyn-commons
eclipse-mylyn-context
eclipse-mylyn-docs
eclipse-mylyn-ide
eclipse-mylyn-tasks
eclipse-mylyn-versions
eclipse-nls
eclipse-nlspackager
eclipse-oprofile
eclipse-p2-discovery
eclipse-packagekit
eclipse-photran
eclipse-phpeclipse
eclipse-ptp
eclipse-pydev
eclipse-quickrex
eclipse-rpm-editor
eclipse-rpmstubby
eclipse-rse
eclipse-sdk-nls
eclipse-setools
eclipse-shelled
eclipse-slice2java
eclipse-slide
eclipse-subclipse
eclipse-systemtapgui
eclipse-testframework
eclipse-texlipse
eclipse-valgrind
eclipse-veditor
eclipse-vrapper
eclipse-wtp-common
eclipse-wtp-servertools
eclipse-wtp-sourceediting
findbugs-contrib
maven-eclipse-plugin
svnkit

[sami wagiaalla]

>  (https://fedorahosted.org/rel-eng/ticket/5021) so I will send out
> the
>  message as soon as that is approved. The goal is to finish this before
>  f17 branches from rawhide.
>  
Unfortunately I have missed the above deadline but here is an update of 
I have been upto:

Before the custom tag was created I started patching the packages and 
finished all of them.

I have posted the rpms here:

http://people.redhat.com/swagiaal/reconciler/

The above is a yum repo for which the repo file is here:

http://people.redhat.com/swagiaal/reconciler.repo

All the patches can be found here:

http://people.redhat.com/swagiaal/reconciler_patches/

Please give the packages a try. I have done some smoke testing. 
Basically I just looked to see that the bundles provided by the given 
package are loading. Things look good. Because we missed the branching 
dead line these patches will have to be committed to both rawhide and 
f17. An update will need to be pushed to f17. I have requested 
permissions to most of these packages but if you are interested in doing 
the work yourself please reply to this email with the packages that you 
want to take care of. Otherwise you might see an email from me 
requesting commit permissions to your packages.

So let's give these packages a couple of days and start (hopefully also 
finish) committing by Monday.

Here is a summary of packages:

Broken build:

eclipse-anyedit (Does not build possiblly because of use of internal 
classes)
eclipse-collabnet-merge (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=786583)
eclipse-m2m-qvtoml (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=786943)
eclipse-mdt-uml2 (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=786933)
svnkit (Does not build. Java errors)
eclipse-wtp-servertools (Does not build)
eclipse-wtp-sourceediting (does not load because of some unsatisfied 
requirements)

Retired:

eclipse-demos
eclipse-nlspackager
eclipse-sdk-nls
eclipse-slice2java

Done:

eclipse-changelog
eclipse-fedorapackager
eclipse-mylyn
eclipse-mylyn-builds
eclipse-mylyn-commons
eclipse-mylyn-context
eclipse-mylyn-docs
eclipse-mylyn-ide
eclipse-mylyn-tasks
eclipse-mylyn-versions
eclipse-rpm-editor
eclipse-rpmstubby
eclipse-emf
eclipse-rse
eclipse-cdt
eclipse-jgit
eclipse-egit
eclipse-birt
eclipse-callgraph
eclipse-gef
eclipse-oprofile
eclipse-systemtapgui
eclipse-valgrind
eclipse-linuxprofilingframework
eclipse-testframework
eclipse-vrapper
eclipse-eclemma
eclipse
eclipse-cdt
eclipse-emf-query
eclipse-emf-transaction
eclipse-emf-validation
eclipse-epic
eclipse-avr
eclipse-checkstyle
eclipse-cmakeed
eclipse-dltk
eclipse-dtp
eclipse-eclox
eclipse-findbugs
eclipse-gcov
eclipse-gprof
eclipse-manpage
eclipse-mdt-ocl
eclipse-mercurial
eclipse-moreunit
eclipse-mpc
eclipse-nls
eclipse-p2-discovery
eclipse-packagekit
eclipse-phpeclipse
eclipse-ptp
eclipse-pydev
eclipse-quickrex
eclipse-setools
eclipse-shelled
eclipse-slide
eclipse-subclipse
eclipse-texlipse
eclipse-veditor
eclipse-wtp-common
findbugs-contrib

[sami wagiaalla]

>  So let's give these packages a couple of days and start
> (hopefully also
>  finish) committing by Monday.
>  
I am going to hold off on this as I have run into an issue where bundles 
installed using and update site don't work with bundles installed using 
rpm if there is a bundle conflict between the two.

I am investigating.

Thanks

[sami wagiaalla]

>  I am going to hold off on this as I have run into an issue where
> bundles
>  installed using and update site don't work with bundles installed using
>  rpm if there is a bundle conflict between the two.
>
>  I am investigating.
>  
After looking into this I realized that we cannot move forward with the 
reconciler solution.

The issue here is not the old issue of plugins not being installed 
properly using eclipse's installation system p2, but having plugins 
installed in two different locations each with it's own metadata. The 
first location being system directories used by rpm such as 
/usr/share/eclipse/ and the location used by the eclipse installation 
system ~/.eclipse. When there is a conflict between the two location 
eclipse simply picks the system installation resulting in the downloaded 
plugin and all downloaded plugins to be dropped.

We are working on a better solution for this problem.

Thanks,
   Sami