Is it time to change our releng game plan and/or how the downloads page is setup to provide more visibility for the p2 installer?
* energetic (n=opera@ip82-139-119-221.lijbrandt.net) has joined #eclipse
energetic: Hi all
energetic: Am I with stupid or does eclipse does not have an installer?
rcjsuen: energetic: The builds from eclipse.org don’t, no.
energetic: I would expect any decent program created has an installer
energetic: now i am 1. really wondering why eclipse oesnt have an…. installer…. and 2. wondering why I am discussing this
rcjsuen: energetic: Well, not Eclipse anyway. If that bothers you, then feel free to not use Eclipse.
energetic: but for #$%^&* sake! why!
nitind: You don’t need an installer.
Orangebat: energetic: m’eh, it’s one directory, put it in program files, it’s installed
energetic: an installer! something we have solved for years!
rcjsuen: energetic: unzip and go, pretty straightforward to me
rcjsuen: I don’t even next to click ‘Next’ or ‘Finish’.
energetic: so an batch scripts to xcopy files was too hard
rcjsuen: Just double-click my eclipse.exe and I’m good to go.
* energetic removes eclipse. Devvers coding an IDE without an installer, have high chances of being unable to code a decent IDE
nitind: energetic: Or, see http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox_p2_Installer
nitind: energetic: And you are making a LOT of invalid assumptions and conclusions.
rcjsuen: energetic: Good luck on your project using another IDE then.
rcjsuen: Perhaps we will see you around again someday.
energetic: cya guys in 2-3 years
* energetic (n=opera@ip82-139-119-221.lijbrandt.net) has left #eclipse
That might help if the p2 installer were actually easier to use or more functional than the EPP packages available on the main downloads page. But it’s neither of those, so what’s the point?
Sorry to be such a “hater” but I’m hardly alone in my distaste for p2; there is a reason there are hundreds of bug filed against it in the past year and probably hundreds of blog and newsgroup posts expressing confusion and or frustration with it.
funny one :)
Sorry to say this, but energetic is so absolutely right. In my company there were many “How can this be good software if it does not even have an installer?” comments, when people tried Eclipse for themselves. We (as Eclipse experts) all know, _which_ of the many downloads to use and how to install Eclipse, but for a typical Windows user the current scenario really makes a bad user experience. And that leaves to thoughts like “If the Eclipse developers ignore this simple request to have a decent installer, they will probably ignore any other real issue we might have by using Eclipse.”
I agree that a decent installer, whereby I mean something a non-Eclipsian understands through platform familiarity, would be a big help for the acceptance of Eclipse as RCP platform.
- platform conforming (or p2 aware standalone lightweight) installer
- platform conforming placement of workspaces and documents
Well, there are two kinds of developers. The professional ones who need multiple installations of IDEs and who hate installers (because you can only have one installation of the program) and the ones who don’t care because they treat an IDE not as a tool but as something like Visio or Word. Install once and use that.
Like a real craftsmen uses specialed tools for his jobs (multiple Eclipse installations). They don’t use a generic no-size-fits-it-all setup of the development environment. That silly, i think.
(Besides, P2 still needs a lot of improvement)
Sorry for my typos. Corrections:
- craftsman
- specialized
- one-size-fits-it-all
- That’s
I have asked this question myself on the eclipse.technology.equinox newsgroup and rechecking it today I see Pascal responded. Here is the thread.
Pascal Rapicault wrote:
>>> Is there a P2 Installer enabled for JavaWebStart or any work being
>>> done in
> that direction?
> The p2 installer is a simple RCP app (no workbench), as such like any
> other RCP app it can be deployed using p2.
> What are you really after: installing the installer and then
> installing the product? or Do you want to deploy your complete app with
> JWS and also have p2 manage it?
I want to deploy a simple Java Web Start P2 installer for my RCP app.
Scenario:
1. Customer wants to install my RCP, finds the installation page of my website.
2. Installation page magic checks customers JRE versions and displays warnings with links to download/upgrade JRE OR
a JNLP link.
3. Customer clicks the JNLP link (not knowing what JNLP is because he dosen’t have to) and the p2 installer is downloaded, executed, and displayed.
4. P2 installer prompts for directory to install . Customer answers prompt. P2 installer installs the app.
5. App is a fully p2ized and able to deal with p2 updates without JWS.
Benefits- no zips, no extractions, no extraction tools, validates Java, no teaching customers how to install or making sure they have unzipping tools.
One of the reasons why I prefer to all other IDEs is the absense of installers on eclipse.org. I think every tool that doesn’t need an installer should not have one.
Btw installers are a good place to loose friends – I hate the Netbeans installer for putting icons and menus in places without asking me (yes I know that NB has a zip as well). That is so unprofessional and shows such disrespect for me as user that I have always wondered what else was made with that attitude (and at that place in time I haven’t used it for a single moment and already don’t like it).