Eclipse RCP Target Platform: Updates & Backing Up

Question

I've just created an eclipse target definition/platform for my application, opting to use software sites (rather than local files/installations) as recommended in the tutorial I followed and a later best practices post by the same author.

The software sites are all external sites (eclipse, sourceforge etc.)

Everything seems to be working well, though I have two concerns:

1. If a component is updated (by the software provider), will it also be updated automatically in the target definition file?
2. Is it possible to take a backup of the target platform, so that it can be configured (for example) on a computer without an internet connection, or used in the event a remote site becomes unavailable.

Answer 1

You can create a mirror of an Eclipse p2 repository. It's quite common to do this inside an organisation so that there's a copy of the repository that's quick to access, and isn't dependant on some third party continuing to host it. There's a guide on the Eclipse Wiki.

As far as I'm aware, your Target Definition can only reflect what's in the p2 repository it's pointing at. If the developer replaces a package with a newer version, it'll pick that up. If you need greater control over that, then selectively mirroring the content is probably the way to go.

From that wiki page, it looks like by default it won't delete content in your mirror (even if it's deleted in the remote) unless you specify -writeMode clean.