Packaging one or two plugins as a standalone RCP application?

Question

I have a handful of Eclipse plugins that I maintain. They are proving useful enough that non Eclipse users have asked for them without the overhead of a full eclipse install.

I am certain this is possible, but uncertain how to make this possible. My attempts at creating a standalone RCP app and then including my plugins as dependencies have given me mixed results. More specifically, my perspective tries to instantiate a view from a plugin and fails (silently)...

public void createInitialLayout(IPageLayout layout) {
layout.addStandaloneView( "myPlugin.ID",  false, IPageLayout.LEFT, 0.25f, editorArea);
}

... but as the same plugin implements a search extension, it does show up in the standard Eclipse search dialog.

Are there any resources that hardened Eclipse tars can point me to, that will help overcome this hurdle?

M.

Answer 1

One lead to follow is the notion of product build, based on Equinox/p2/Adding Self-Update to an RCP Application.