How is a user .setup file handled and how can a provisioned installation get updates

[phermsdorf]

Hi,

using a local user .setup file for provisioning an eclipse installation is working.
And it even adds a config entry to the eclipse.ini like:

-Doomph.redirection.afs=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/afs/org.eclipse.company/main/.../Company.setup->file:/D:/workspace/company-main2/git/company/setup/Company.setup
which i thought would make it happen, that updates to Company.setup in the referenced git checkout folder would trigger a change of the provisioned eclipse. But actually that does not seem to happen.

What i did (for a fresh install):

• manually downloaded Company.setup and installed as as a User product (e.g. by selectiong the local file or drag'n'drop to the installer in simple mode)
• after the new eclipse has started and finished all setup steps i closed that eclipse instance
• i removed the initially used Company.setup file
• i updated the Company.setup file in the workspace of the newly provisioned eclipse install (which is referenced in the eclipse.ini)
• (to kind of simulate an update to Company.setup which would be pullet in by a git pull action in the provisioned ide)
• i started the eclipse installation again but the changes from the Company.setup (which is shown as modified in the workspace) are not applied

Is this the supposed way how to setup an eclipse in a team?
Why is the changed .setup file not honored?

Thanks for any hints on this.

Bye Peter

[merks]

I think the initial step is already wrong.

• Why are you not using directly the URI https://raw.githubusercontent.com/afs/org.eclipse.company/main/.../Company.setup for the first step?
• What does the file ~/.eclipse/org.eclipse.oomph.setup/setups/user.products.setup look like? From the description it sounds like that will be pointing at the file system...

It's quite handy to show all resources in the resource set via the toolbar button and then in the properties view you can see the resolved URI too:

My guess is that you are pointing at the initially copied resource. In any case, this approach should let you figure how what the URIs look like.

[phermsdorf]

Hi @merks ,

yes, of course it points to the initally used setup file in the file system.

I thought that https://raw.githubusercontent.com/afs/org.eclipse.company/main/.../Company.setup is only kind of a unique ID, actually that URL does not exists.

If you were suggesting to instead use the real URL to the .setup file in the git repo, there is the roblem that this file is hosted in a private bitbucket repo that needs authorization.

To download the file i tried using the URL
https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/<Workspace ID>/<repository>/src/main/setup/Company.setup
when adding the User setup to directly access the latest version of the setup file, but i guess the authorization is not triggered/working.

The Error Message is:
The URI https://api.bitbucket... does not contain a valid project

A test from commandline with the same URL
curl -s -S --user username:AppPassword -L -O https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/<Workspace ID>/<repo>/src/main/setup/Company.setup
downloads the file correctly.

I also tried adding ?oomph_basic_auth=true but without sucess.

Otherwise i think i'll need to add kinde of a mirror server for that file which does not require authentication ...

Any further ideas on how to get that going?

Thanks, bye Peter

[merks]

Note that the URI pairs are just being put into EMF URIMap:

It's used like this:

So applies only to URIs without a query and without a fragment.

[phermsdorf]

I tried using an internal web server without authentication and that does not work too. So that does not seem to be my issue currently.

I'll try to recap my current setup, so maybe you can point me in the right direction to a fix here:

I have the current version 1.36 of the installer extracted and running in advanced mode.

This is how my eclipse-inst.ini looks like:

--launcher.library
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_64_1.2.1200.v20250212-0927
-vm
plugins/org.eclipse.justj.openjdk.hotspot.jre.minimal.stripped.win32.x86_64_21.0.6.v20250130-0529/jre/bin
-startup
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.6.1000.v20250227-1734.jar
--launcher.defaultAction
openFile
--launcher.appendVmargs
--launcher.XXMaxPermSize
256M
-name
Eclipse Installer
-data
@noDefault
-vmargs
-Dp2.httpRule=allow
-Doomph.redirection.afs=http://intern.company.de/p2/mirror/Company.setup->file:/D:/workspace/project-main2/git/company/setup/Company.setup
-Xms256M
-Xmx2048M
-Djavax.net.ssl.trustStoreType=Windows-ROOT
-Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=NONE

With curl http://intern.company.de/p2/mirror/Company.setup i can just download the file without authentication or anything else.

I attached my (anonymized) Company.zip (project configuration)

I Expect

• I start the installer, select "Eclipse for RCP and RAP Developers"
• press Next
• Select my project configuration (as User Product or something else)
• continue with the installation of my setup

Actual result

• I start the installer, select "Eclipse for RCP and RAP Developers"
• press Next
• i see the default 3 groups of projects (Eclipse, Github and OpenDaylight), but not my user project to select
• so the oomph.redirect property does not to have any effect at all

What would be the best/easiest approach to get such a setup running?

Thanks for your help.

Bye Peter

[merks]

Sorry it only just dawned on me that you've been showing me eclipse-inst.ini not the eclipse.ini of an installation. :-( That really confused me. But now I have to leave the office for a while so can't help further until I'm back.

Really think for you purpose you could use a Configuration:

https://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse_Oomph_Authoring#Automation_and_Specialization_with_Configurations

This can help with automatically selecting the product version you want to install and with automatically adding your project to the appropriate catalog. Maybe have a read through that...

[merks]

I would suggest doing something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<setup:Configuration
    xmi:version="2.0"
    xmlns:xmi="http://www.omg.org/XMI"
    xmlns:setup="http://www.eclipse.org/oomph/setup/1.0"
    label="Company">
  <installation
      name="company.installation"
      label="Company Installation">
    <productVersion
        href="index:/org.eclipse.setup#//@productCatalogs[name='org.eclipse.products']/@products[name='epp.package.rcp']/@versions[name='latest.released']"/>
    <description>The Company installation provides cool stuff.</description>
  </installation>
  <workspace
      name="company.workspace"
      label="Company Workspace">
    <stream
        href="Company.setup#//@streams[name='main']"/>
    <description>The Company workspace provides cool stuff.</description>
  </workspace>
  <description>The Company configuration provides cool stuff.</description>
</setup:Configuration>

In the configuration you can specify the product/version you want to install and a reference to the stream(s) you want to add.

You can drag a link to this configuration onto the installer's title area. It will automatically advance to this page:

On the product page it will have selected the product version you specified:

On the project page it will automatically add the project to the user extension of the project's logical project container:

which is saved here:

Ideally these two step files are placed in a common location accessible as plain text. In the above example I just dragged something local on my machine but of course an https URL should work fine as well.

I don't see any need for redirection tasks in the installer itself...

[merks]

BTW, these two options in the eclipse-inst.ini are very useful for testing and cleaning up after testing:

-Duser.home=D:/Users/test36
-Doomph.setup.user.home.redirect=true

I.e., make the installer run in a fake user home and instruct the installer to add that same -Duser.home value in the product's eclipse.ini.

Then you can completely delete D:/Users/test36 any time to test a fresh first-time user experience...

[phermsdorf]

Thanks for that useful pointer, i wasn't aware of this Configuration setup but it seems that it makes sense for my usecase.

Thankfully i found this setup https://www.fakturama.info/creating-a-development-environment-with-oomph-setup/ with the referenced source repository which pointed me in the right direction.

Some notes about building that configuration (maybe for reference)

• i had a hard time getting the stream in the configuration set - finally i came to the point of loading my project setup as resource via the context menu and then dragging and dropping it's stream item onto the workspace item of the configuration model
• after getting that to run without authentication (hosting on internal web server) i tried again directly using the files from bitbucked. obvervations:
  • one needs to use the rest API to access the files with authentication, not the "web ui/browser url":
    • https://bitbucket.org/qualitype/genetics/raw/main/setup/Company.setup -> does not work with curl
    • https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/qualitype/genetics/src/main/setup/Company.setup -> works with curl and App Password
  • i was able to trigger the install process by copying the bitbucket url to the configuration.setup with added ?oomph_basic_auth=true to the clipboard and then use the button "apply configuration from clipboard" in the installer
  • but there was an error on the next page that the installer cannot access my project setup file (which is located directly next to the configuration setup file)
  • in this state the project setup file was referenced as

<stream
        href="Company.setup#//@streams[name='main']"/>

in the configuration setup file

• i then tried to add the reference directly to the bitbucket url (like it's done in the setup of fakturama), but it was not possible to add that file via "Load Resource ..." and then the bitbucket url with again added ?oomph_basic_auth=true (fails with ResourceSetImpl$1DiagnosticWrappedException: org.eclipse.oomph.util.IOExceptionWithCause: File not found: https://api.bitbucket.org/2.0/repositories/....)
• in the end i added to the relative href "manually" ?oomph_basic_auth=true so that it looks like this:

    <stream
        href="Genetics.setup?oomph_basic_auth=true#//@streams[name='main']"/>

• this seems to do the trick

Any further hints on this?

Thanks for your help!

[merks]

Yes, what you show is just like how I did it for my company private repository:

Note that you can add a resource to the editor via drag and drop of a URI. That's often handy for adding a reference like to the stream.

So it sounds like you're off to the races now, right?

[phermsdorf]

Hi @merks , i have missed your follow up comments yesterday, but it seems i was on the right way.
It works now as expected, thanks again!

Bye Peter