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Eclipse Feature Builds
Automating Eclipse Builds with Zed Builds And Bugs
With the introduction of Zed Builds and Bugs 2.1.1 release, the Zed Automated Build Server adds the capability to automate much of the process of creating feature builds for the Eclipse
Eclipse plugin projects are typically grouped into feature sets so that it is easy to gather and distribute eclipse plugins as collections rather than as individual files or folders. Eclipse allows the user to enable/disable plugins at the feature level as well, so that you can tailor your Eclipse working environment to the task at hand and optimize the amount of memory required by your Eclipse workspace at any one time.
Zed Builds And Bugs automated build server now includes specific build steps to help you to build your Eclipse plugin projects when they are grouped into Feature projects. Full details on this can be found in the Zed Documentation on Eclipse Builds or in the individual Eclipse Feature Build Step and the Eclipse Update Site Build Step documentation.
The Eclipse Feature Build Step looks like this when you add it to your Zed Automated Build Project:
On this screen, use the fields as follows:
- Feature Name Enter the name of your Eclipse feature.
- Eclipse Base Dir This is the directory where the Eclipse installation is located. The Zed automated build system uses this Eclipse installation to manage the build of your feature, so any plugins required by your project should be present within this Eclipse installation.
- Generate build.xml Files The Zed automated build system will handle generating all of the Ant build.xml files for you so that your feature is compiled properly. If you have customized these build.xml files, you can turn this option off so that the Zed automated build system will not overwrite your files.
- Standard Targets There are several standard targets provided with the generated Ant build.xml files. Each of these is displayed here with a checkbox to let you turn these targets on or off. At a minimum you will probably need build.jars and either build.update.jar (for an eclipse update site) or zip.distribution (for a CD distribution of your product).
- Custom Targets This allows you to add in any extra Ant build targets that you would like the compile to include. These will be added after the Standard Targets that are referenced.
- Update build.xml Files The generated build.xml files have some settings that we consider sub-optimal. The defaults generated for this build step will help you to adjust those settings. This will do a standard Search & Replace for all build.xml and MANIFEST.MF files within your feature project and dependent plugins.
Handling all of the background work for you and resolving your project dependencies saves you time and headaches while creating automated builds for your eclipse projects. Simply group your plugins into features and let Zed Builds and Bugs handle the automation for you.