From the very beginning we positioned [Tycho][1] as the tool for doing Eclipse/OSGi development with Maven. Even though Tycho originally focused on build automation, we think it is time to extend its functionality, as well as integrating it with other projects, to support the full Eclipse/OSGi application development lifecycle.

Below is a preliminary list of key features we want to implement. We want to know if it looks useful, or if we’re totally off base. What other features and improvements are needed to make Tycho a turnkey solution for Eclipse/OSGi development?

Target platform management

• In addition to Maven, support Eclipse/P2 repositories.
• Seamless roundtrip between local and remote artifact repositories. We need to easily consume and publish artifacts to remote Eclipse/P2 repositories. For us this would be building with Tycho, deploying to a Nexus/P2 repository, and then consuming from that Nexus/P2 repository using Tycho, the Eclipse Update Manager or any P2 client
• Allow implicit and partially defined target platform specifications.
• Reusable target platform specification.

• Run tests against multiple target platforms, possibly in different runtime environments.

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Maven eclipse, Maven, osgi, tycho

Build automation has always been considered painful, especially for complex builds. So, it seemed like a good idea to change that and come up with a solution that would be easy to use. I want to introduce you to Tycho, the next generation of Maven plugins and tools for building Eclipse plugins and RCP applications.

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m2eclipse eclipse, Maven, tycho

Yesterday’s post was in response to a question from Anders Nawroth of the Neo4J effort, and today’s post is no different.  On Tuesday (or maybe it was Monday), Anders asked the neo4j-users list whether it made sense to build the neo4j eclipse plugin with Maven.

I have looked into building Neoclipse using Maven, but at the moment I’m not convinced there are more advantages then disadvantages in this case.  Building Eclipse plugins and products has quite many quirks. With increasing use of product configuration options, the number of build quirks increases as well. There seems to be no really automated build system for Eclipse plugins/products, even when using maven you have to install and update the dependencies manually (the Eclipse artifacts are not deployed to a maven repository).

Sonatype is busily working to address these gaps, and we already have some solutions you can use to start building your Eclipse plugins in Maven.   Igor Fedorenko has been working on Tycho and Maven to create a system to facilitate OSGi and Eclipse development in Maven, and m2eclipse is currently built using Tycho.   To prove that Tycho is a viable path for build the Neoclipse plugin, I took some time yesterday to generate Maven pom.xml files with Tycho and build an update site for Neoclipse. Read more…

How-To eclipse, eclipse plugin, Maven, neo4j, osgi, tycho