Eclipse RCP product with startup update based on p2: is there a way to limit product size?

Question

I'm working on an Eclipse RCP application (Eclipse 3.7 Indigo) that includes some update capabilities based on P2.

I defined a product config file and built the product using the Eclipse Product Export Wizard, selecting the 'generate metadata repository option', and it worked well (I'm able to run the built product correctly).

My concerns are about the product size, since the build directory contains:

• the usual artifacts (configuration, jre, plugins, features,..);

• the'repository' dir (that I moved to the update site location)

• the 'p2' dir, having the following content:

  p2
  |
  ----org.eclipse.equinox.p2.engine
  |
  ----org.eclipse.equinox.p2.core
  
      |
      ----cache
          |
          ----binary
              |
              ----Airetes_root.win32.win32.x86_0.8.0 (30 MB!)
  

(Airetes is the temporary name of my app).

Question: Is there a way to reduce the size of that file?

Don't understand what it contains, I assume that it needs to be included in the product, but it nearly doubles the size of my application...

I spent several hours searching, but the documentation I found is quite limited and unstructured.

Answer 1

This file is an zip file. Open it with a zipper and look inside. You can define the contents via root files. eclipse help on root files. Usually it should be really small < 1 MB, if you have no native/platform specific artifacts.