[tycho-user] Creating product and updating it

[Milan Kubec]

Hello Tycho users,
we are using Tycho to build complete product and we use .product file
for actual final product assembly. The product is created and works
correctly, but ... we also need to update the product and ideally
install the product to Eclipse IDE as 'Install New Software' and even
more ideally update it afterwards too.

Product created from .product file is presented in Eclipse Installation
Details as one node (defined as UID in .product file) with all features
as sub-nodes, so far so good. When doing update against the same (but
newer) repository that was created during build of the product, it works
OK, only one node is shown in Update dialog and our features are updated
as one unit.

If the same repository is used to 'Install New Software' then it doesn't
work the same way, all our features are listed as separate nodes in
Update dialog and user can check each feature to be installed. To fix
this there is category.xml file along with the .product file, which
defines one category with one (super-)feature including all our features
that are part of our product. If I then run 'Install New Software'
against the same repository, all our features are presented under one
category and it can be installed as such, as one unit.

The problem is that there are actually two definitions of our product -
one in the .product file (assembling the product and update) and second
in the category.xml (Install New Software and update). The solution
would be to use either only .product file or only the super-feature to
assemble the product. The question is: Is there any way to bypass
.product file and define whole product including name of the launcher,
startup parameters, and everything that is defined in .product using
only feature.group and some other measures? Or other way around only
.product file that would install product as unit using Install New Software?

Thanks

  Milan Kubec