Is it currently possible to build Eclipse Plugins by Maven AND have nice IDE Integration?

Question

I\'m currently evaluating maven to improve our build process. The building and creating of normal jar files works so far, although I\'m not entirely happy with the Maven IDE

Answer 1

I use m2eclipse and it fits well my needs. You specify your dependencies in the pom.xml and they are automatically taken into account in Eclipse's build path.

Caveat: I cannot tell anything about RCP (never built anything for that platform).

Best regards,

Cyril

Answer 2

In our project we have separated the target platform and the application plugins. In short: we build the target platform with Maven, while the application plugins are built with PDE.

Answer 3

No there is no such tool. Tycho is also the only approach I know of.

Answer 4

I used Mavenide for a while, it was just ok. Not sure on how it is today though.

Answer 5

Nowadays Tycho allows resolving dependencies based on the built bundles' manifests (required bundles, imported packages, etc.).

Moreover, Tycho can be configured to use a target platform for the build. This allows using the same target platform for maven and pde builds.

Since v0.24.0, Tycho can even build POM-less plug-ins and features, avoiding the duplication of version and artifactId metadata.

In light of the above, and considering that even the Eclipse Platform is built using it for a few years now, Maven Tycho is currently the best way to build an RCP headlessly.

Answer 6

If u r building an Eclipse Plugin or application (RCP) Maven Tycho is the recommended way to build it.

It's pretty intelligent in resolving osgi dependencies. U can refer to my tutorials on Maven Tycho Tutorials

Maven Tycho requires m2eclipse and Tycho configurator installation.

And archetype should be eclipse-plugin or eclipse-feature or eclipse-repository