An introduction to p2

At EclipseCon I had the pleasure of presenting an introductory tutorial on p2 with an awesome co-presenter Kim Moir.

The tutorial went well, although we did have a few technical problems at the beginning. We knew there was way too much material to cover in a 3 hour tutorial, and if we started cutting it down then we wouldn’t get to the advanced material (which 1/2 the people want to see). If we started with the advanced material then we would loose the other half of the audience.    So either way, 1/2 of the room will be disappointed. :(  We decided to shoot somewhere in the middle and make the tutorial available as an Eclipse plug-in. This way, if you need a little more time, you could work through it at your own pace. If you are a p2 wiz, then you could whip ahead and take an early lunch.

P2 Introduction

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If you couldn’t make the tutorial, the plug-in is available here as a p2 repository. The tutorial was designed to work with Eclipse 3.6 M6, so you will likely have to download that version of Eclipse. Once you have Eclipse 3.6 M6, simply open Help->Install New Software…

1. Enter https://download.eclipsesource.com/~irbull/p2-tutorial
2. Make sure you UN-CHECK GROUP BY CATEGORY!
3. Select p2 Tutorials Tools

Once installed, you can open the view called RCP Book Samples Manager (our plug-in was based on the famous samples manager from the Eclipse RCP Book).

You can use the samples manager to move between the different parts of the tutorial. You can even compare the solution to the start to see exactly what you have to do for each task.

If you have questions or feedback on the tutorial, please don’t hesitate to contact me at irbull @ eclipsesource (dot) com.