Who’s On Phirst

When I started working with Eclipse in 2003 I would just download the plug-ins I needed from the Eclipse website, unzip them into my plugins directory, and restart Eclipse. Sometime later, the Eclipse Update Manager was introduced to help you configure your Eclipse development environment providing the ability to update your existing features and plug-ins and search for new features. I have always found the Update Manager dialogs difficult to understand and use. Customizing the Update Manager to work with my Rich Client Platform (RCP) applications has also been very difficult.

When I heard about the new Equinox p2 provisioning system at EclipseCon this year I was excited that the Update Manager was finally being replaced. However, one thing I have learned when working with Eclipse is to take a “wait and see” approach before adopting the newest and improved APIs and methodologies. So, I have been reading various blogs to see what experiences developers are having implementing p2 in their products. Here are a couple of postings that make me think that p2 may not be quite ready for prime time:

Why Eclipse Equinox P2 Update Manager Sucks

Why Eclipse Equinox P2 Update Manager is not good enough for me yet #2

If you have had a positive experience replacing Update Manager functionality with p2 in your software product I would love to hear about it.

-Shawn