Best way to configure Eclipse Target-Platform?

Question

What is the best way to configure target platform to develop Eclipse RCP application? Download 'pure' Eclipse and add only needed plug-ins in project or download Eclipse for RCP and RAP Developers? And what is better solution to add plugins? Open Eclipse-TP and download from eclipse-marketplace or manually copy jars to appropriate folders?

Answer 1

It depends on the set of plug-ins your RCP application depends on.

• "RCP SDK" provides a minimal target platform, with source code.
• "Platform SDK" provided more plug-ins, with source code. It includes more plug-ins than RCP SDK, without including the developer-oriented plug-ins of Eclipse IDEs. Unfortunately, this platform is not currently provided.
• "Platform Runtime Binary" provides the same thing as Platform SDK -- without source code.

If you want to release on multiple platforms, also download the DeltaPack, which contains platform-specific resources for multiple platforms.

By the way, if you're adding the target platform to version control, use binary type for the following files in plugins/*/META-INF:

• eclipse.inf -- line endings should be NL
• MANIFEST.MF, ECLIPSE_.SF, and ECLIPSEF.SF (note the spelling) -- line endings should be CR/NL