Tycho build 6: Building products

Now that we can build almost everything, there is just one step missing: building an RCP application.

Tycho Tutorials

For a list of all tycho related tutorials see Tycho Tutorials Overview

Source code for this tutorial is available on github as a single zip archive, as a Team Project Set or you can browse the files online.

Step 1: Convert required projects

Our example product has additional dependencies to com.codeandme.tycho.product and com.codeandme.tycho.product.feature which are not part of our maven build yet. To build our product we need to convert them first.

So convert com.codeandme.tycho.product to an eclipse-plugin and com.codeandme.tycho.product.feature to an eclipse-feature. Afterwards add both of them to our releng pom file. Nothing new so far.

Verify that your build works before proceeding.

Step 2: Create a project for our product

Create a new General/Project called com.codeandme.tycho.releng.product. Convert it to a maven project with Packaging set to eclipse-repository. Add the new project to our releng pom file as a module like we did for all the other projects.

Now move the file com.codeandme.tycho.product/Tycho.product to the root folder of our newly created project. Tycho will not pick up product files by default, so we need to adjust our com.codeandme.tycho.releng.product/pom.xml file a little. Add the following section within the project node:

 <build>
  <plugins>
   <plugin>
    <groupId>org.eclipse.tycho</groupId>
    <artifactId>tycho-p2-director-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>${tycho.version}</version>
    <executions>
     <execution>
      <!-- install the product using the p2 director -->
      <id>materialize-products</id>
      <goals>
       <goal>materialize-products</goal>
      </goals>
     </execution>
     <execution>
      <!-- create zip file with the installed product -->
      <id>archive-products</id>
      <goals>
       <goal>archive-products</goal>
      </goals>
     </execution>
    </executions>
   </plugin>
  </plugins>
 </build>

Step 3: Set start levels of your product bundles

There is one more step to take before we can run the build. It seems that PDE build (the thing that runs when you export an RCP product) adds some magic regarding bundle start levels. In fact it adjusts some autostart settings which we need to teach tycho manually.

Open your product definition file and switch to the Configuration tab. Use the Add Recommended button to populate plug-ins with their according start levels.

Save your product and start the build process. You should find your product in com.codeandme.tycho.releng.product/target/products/tycho.product/win32/win32/x86. There will also be a zipped version available in the target/products folder.

If you have problems with the startup levels for your build, then use the Eclipse Product export wizard from the Overview tab of your product file. Switch to the folder where you exported your product to and open the file configuration/org.eclipse.equinox.simpleconfigurator/bundles.info. Each line holds an entry of type

bundle_name,version,location,startlevel,autostart

Find all bundles where autostart is set to true and add them in your product configuration file with their according start levels.

Optional: Adding p2.inf files

If you want to add additional p2 information to your product build, place your p2 file in the same folder as your project file and name it <project_name>.p2.inf.

Eg. create a file com.codeandme.tycho.releng.product/Tycho.p2.inf with following content to add the Mars repository to the preconfigured update sites:

instructions.configure=\
org.eclipse.equinox.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.addRepository(type:0,location:http${#58}//download.eclipse.org/releases/mars,name:Mars);\
org.eclipse.equinox.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.addRepository(type:1,location:http${#58}//download.eclipse.org/releases/mars,name:Mars);

Optional: Build for multiple platforms

Adding another platform is simple: just ad a new environment to your master pom file:

      <environment>
       <os>macosx</os>
       <ws>cocoa</ws>
       <arch>x86_64</arch>
      </environment>

Eclipse help provides a full list of environment variables.

Optional: Adding icons to your product

When adding program icons in your product file the Browse... button will use an absolute path to your .ico file.

Unfortunately the tycho build will not be able to pick up the image that way and report:

Error - 7 icon(s) not replaced in <some path>\launcher.exe using
<some other path>\com.example.tycho.releng.product\images\your_icon.ico

To fix this use a path relative to your product definition file. For the example in the screenshot this would be images/my_product.ico.

More information on icons is covered in this stacktrace topic.