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Bug 315388

Summary:	outdated and dead links to documentation about PDE Build
Product:	[Eclipse Project] PDE	Reporter:	Stephan Herrmann <stephan.herrmann>
Component:	Build	Assignee:	pde-build-inbox <pde-build-inbox>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	P3	CC:	aniefer
Version:	3.6
Target Milestone:	3.6 RC4
Hardware:	PC
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:

Description Stephan Herrmann

2010-06-02 08:39:51 EDT

When you search the Eclipse.org web pages for documentation 
regarding PDE Build you'll get several out-dated or broken links:

From the projects homepage http://www.eclipse.org/pde/pde-build/
you'll only get to http://www.eclipse.org/pde/pde-build/dev.php
from where you get
 - a document from July 2003: http://www.eclipse.org/pde/pde-build/doc/usage.html
 - a 404 at http://www.eclipse.org/pde/pde-build/dev.html
End of story

From the Eclipse wiki searching for "pde.build" the best hit is
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Platform-releng-faq from were you'll find
 - "How do I automate my builds with PDE Build?"
   -> a document from June 2005: http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/org.eclipse.releng.basebuilder/readme.html?content-type=text%2Fhtml&revision=HEAD

From the PDE project summary http://www.eclipse.org/projects/project_summary.php?projectid=eclipse.pde
you'll find a wiki page at http://wiki.eclipse.org/PDE which links to 
http://wiki.eclipse.org/PDE/Build containing some random hints.
It says most useful information should be found here
http://help.eclipse.org/help32/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.pde.doc.user/guide/tasks/pde_feature_build.htm
(obviously referring to Eclispe 3.2).

Also note that the category "Category:PDE" referenced from
http://wiki.eclipse.org/PDE does not exist.

BTW: I was searching for documentation on how PDE Build supports p2.
None of the paths mentioned above gave useful results to that question.
Starting from the p2 side results are *slightly* better.

Comment 1 Andrew Niefer

2010-06-02 10:36:53 EDT

http://help.eclipse.org will always redirect to the most recent docs, a search there should get what you want.

Comment 2 Stephan Herrmann

2010-06-02 11:41:22 EDT

(In reply to comment #1)
> http://help.eclipse.org will always redirect to the most recent docs, a search
> there should get what you want.

I was about to update the help-link in the wiki, but I could not find a version
independent URL that points directly to anything related to PDE Build.

BTW: I was not questioning that such documentation exists :) (I'm currently
working with the built-in help), but there's so many cannonical ways to search
for this information and almost all of them lead to dead ends.
For someone who is not specialized on release engineering this can become
quite frustrating.

Comment 3 Andrew Niefer

2010-06-02 11:55:17 EDT

(In reply to comment #2)
> (In reply to comment #1)
> > http://help.eclipse.org will always redirect to the most recent docs, a search
> > there should get what you want.
> 
> I was about to update the help-link in the wiki, but I could not find a version
> independent URL that points directly to anything related to PDE Build.

I raised bug 315416 for this

Comment 4 Stephan Herrmann

2010-06-02 12:03:58 EDT

(In reply to comment #3)
> I raised bug 315416 for this

Thanks!
(I wasn't aware that this is a general problem).

Comment 5 Andrew Niefer

2010-06-02 14:35:46 EDT

Updated http://wiki.eclipse.org/Pde.build to point to http://wiki.eclipse.org/PDE/Build

Updated wiki.eclipse.org/PDE/Build to point to galileo help for now

Created category "PDE" and category "PDE/Build".  

Moved the build faq stuff to PDE/Build/FAQ

Comment 6 Andrew Niefer

2010-06-03 17:51:01 EDT

- updated http://www.eclipse.org/pde/pde-build/
- updated http://wiki.eclipse.org/Platform-releng-faq 
 
I think this covers everything.

The PDE/Build wiki & faq can use some loving but that can be an ongoing thing.