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							    PDE support
							 ------------------
							   Graham Leggett
							 ------------------
							     12-06-2007
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Eclipse Plugin Development Environment support

 The Eclipse plugin supports creating configurations for Eclipse PDE (Plugin
 Development Environment).
 
 These configurations can be used to create Eclipse plugins, features, or
 Eclipse RCP products.
 
 Note that the scope of the <maven-eclipse-plugin> is to synchronise the
 Eclipse <.project> and <.classpath> files with the configuration found in
 the pom file. Once you have finished configuring the Eclipse plugin as
 below, and once you have run the <eclipse:eclipse> goal, you will be in
 a position to build your plugin code with the Eclipse IDE, or the 
 {{{http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-PDE-Automation/automation.html}Eclipse headless PDE build}}.
 The Eclipse headless PDE build can be triggered from
 within Maven using the {{{http://mojo.codehaus.org/pde-maven-plugin/}pde-maven-plugin}}.
 
* Enabling PDE support
 
 Enabling support for PDE is achieved by setting the <pde> flag to true
 within the configuration.
 
+-----------------------------------------------------+
      <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-eclipse-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>${project.version}</version>
        <configuration>
          <pde>true</pde>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
+-----------------------------------------------------+

* Eclipse PDE configuration

 When PDE support is enabled in the <maven-eclipse-plugin>, the
 Eclipse project files are configured differently to the default.
 These differences are explained below.
 
 * Plugin Nature
 
 The <org.eclipse.pde.PluginNature> is added to the list of eclipse
 project natures, indicating to Eclipse that this project is a PDE
 project.
 
 * Plugin Dependencies
 
 The <Plugin Dependencies> library is added to the Eclipse classpath.
 This Eclipse library resolves Eclipse/OSGI dependencies, and removes the
 need for maven to depend explicitly on eclipse jars.
 
 * Linked Resources
 
 In order for the Eclipse PDE system to build or deploy an Eclipse PDE
 project, it requires that dependent jars exist somewhere within the
 project itself.
 
 By default, the <eclipse:eclipse> goal sets up the Eclipse classpath
 such that the project depends on jars in the external local maven
 repository. When PDE mode is enabled, dependencies are configured
 as Eclipse linked resources instead.
 
 Eclipse linked resources work like symbolic links within the Eclipse
 IDE. These linked resources appear in the root directory of your
 PDE project, and link the jars within your repository into the root
 of your project as required by Eclipse.
 
 <<Note: Linked resources are correctly referenced from the Eclipse
 IDE, however due to a limitation of the Eclipse headless PDE build,
 linked resources are not correctly referenced from the Eclipse headless
 PDE build. As a result, attempts to use the Eclipse export wizard to export
 your plugin, feature or product, and attempts to use the pde-maven-plugin
 to do so will fail, despite the same build working in the IDE.>>
 
 The workaround is to use the <maven-dependency-plugin> to copy your
 dependent jars into the root of your project before running Eclipse.
 The <maven-clean-plugin> is configured to remove these jar files on
 <mvn clean>. Don't forget to configure your source control server to
 ignore *.jar files in the root directory of your project.
 
+-----------------------------------------------------+
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.1</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <id>copy-dependencies</id>
            <phase>process-sources</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>copy-dependencies</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
              <outputDirectory>${basedir}</outputDirectory>
              <overWriteReleases>false</overWriteReleases>
              <overWriteSnapshots>false</overWriteSnapshots>
              <overWriteIfNewer>true</overWriteIfNewer>
            </configuration>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
 
      <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-clean-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.3</version>
        <configuration>
          <filesets>
            <fileset>
              <directory>${basedir}</directory>
              <includes>
                <include>*.jar</include>
              </includes>
              <followSymlinks>false</followSymlinks>
             </fileset>
           </filesets>
         </configuration>
       </plugin>
+-----------------------------------------------------+

* Building PDE Code

 Having configured Eclipse correctly using <maven-eclipse-plugin>, the task
 of building your PDE project is a job for one or more of:
 
 * {{{http://www.eclipse.org/jdt/}The Eclipse IDE}}
 
 * {{{http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-PDE-Automation/automation.html}The Eclipse PDE headless build process}}
 
 * {{{http://mojo.codehaus.org/pde-maven-plugin/}pde-maven-plugin}}
 
 Refer to the links above for further build instructions.