Problem with update site categories in Eclipse 3.4

Question

I am using Eclipse 3.4 (ganymede official, not the service pack).

I have an update site that organizes features into categories; everything looks great in the editor and in the XML.

Once the site is online, accessing it in the usual manner tells me that all the features are "uncategorized". I've tried from multiple computers running 3.4 and the same problem persists.

What is curious is that I used Eclipse 3.3, and it saw the categories well, though of course it wasn't able to instlal the plugins which are made from 3.4.

Am I doing something wrong or is this a known problem?

Answer 1

I've always had trouble with Eclipse's updating; I don't know what it is, but it just always seems buggy for me. You aren't doing anything wrong. In my eyes it's a known problem.

Answer 2

It appears to be a known problem, due to the new 'p2' provisioning system.

See this discussion, and this bug. What it seems to say is... "stay put until 3.5M3, and then try it again".

Answer 3

This solution works for me:

1. Use the PDE update site project to create the site.xml and build your plugins. Make sure you set the category here.
2. Delete the artifacts.xml and content.xml created by the update site build.
3. Use the P2 Metadata Generator to generate your artifacts and content files. I use the compress option so I'm getting jars.
4. The update site should include: the site.xml, content & artifacts jars, features and plugins folders.

If you follow this procedure, it will work just fine in Eclipse 3.3 and 3.4. Naturally, you should automate this process with Ant.

Important notes:

• I never got the metadata generator Ant task to work, so I invoke it in its' Java form (the second example in the link above).
• Make sure you clear the artifacts and content xmls before the generation
• Inputs: site.xml and built plugins/features folders
• Specify the metadataRepositoryName which is the update site title (shown to the user in some cases)

I'll do my best to blog about it soon... Let me know if you have any questions.

Answer 4

What seems to work for me is to put the tag, defining the category in the site.xml, before the tag including the other category tag. If you add the category with eclipse's editor after adding the feature, it'll have messed that up...