[fedora-java] Eclipse p2's artifacts.xml/jar and hard-coded paths

[Andrew Overholt]

* Sean Flanigan <sflaniga at redhat.com> [2009-04-28 02:13]:
> So I would like to include the P2 metadata with eclipse-nls (RPMs for
> the Babel langpacks).

That would be cool, but see below.

> 1. Does Eclipse in fact care about these paths?

It does not.

> 2. Is there a Fedora packaging rule that says build-time paths are not
> allowed into packages, perhaps because they make it impossible to
> reproduce byte-identical builds?

Yup.

> 3. Assuming one of the above is true: Could we sed-patch the
> artifacts.xml file to remove/normalise the build path?

We could.  Because we're just generating letting the p2 metadata get
generated, the only thing we're saving by having it is startup time the
first startup after installation.  That is, unless the package itself
generates custom p2 metadata; I worry about p2 install actions like
"chmod" and "mkdir".

> 4. Alternatively, would it help if we were to use the P2 director to
> install eclipse-nls from a local update site, thus installing the
> features the P2 way, rather than using dropins?

I've been trying to find a way to do this for the past few weeks but to
no avail.  The combination of a common bundle pool, a system-wide
profile, and the fact that rpm lays down the bits and *then* runs
%post/%postun makes it *very* difficult if not impossible to use the
director in this way.  3.5 has had a lot of improvements WRT dropins and
I've done some tests with it and I think we're in better shape.

Andrew