Plugins not updated when building eclipse P2 update site

Question

I have created an eclipse update site (using Helios) and added some features (containing my own plug-ins available in the target platform ). I then synchronized the site and build it which creates two folders: features and plugins containing the plugins and features (.jar files).

I then make some changes to one of the plugins in the feature, update the feature and the update site and build it again. But the resulting plugin in the plugins folder is not updated!

How do I force the update site to produce the updated plugins in the plugins folder?

Answer 1

I know it's probably not the textbook answer, but I used to delete all previous outputs and sync again before each build.

Eventually, I switched to the PDE-Build tool. It's a headless script which is much more stable than the UI based build. It takes time to master, but, if you do this on a regular basis and you need consistent results, it is worth the effort.

Answer 2

One key idea to force an update: make sure, the version of the new build is different from the old one. The simplest way to achieve this is to use a version number like 1.0.0.qualifier This way during build the current date and time is added to the fourth number of the version.

I also suggest not using update site projects, but simply exporting deployable features. For details see my blog entry (sorry for advertising myself :) ). This way works much easier.