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Bug 63932

Summary: Performance: searching for features on an update site needs improvement
Product: [Eclipse Project] Platform Reporter: Dorian Birsan <birsan>
Component: Update (deprecated - use Eclipse>Equinox>p2)Assignee: Platform-Update-Inbox <platform-update-inbox>
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: P2 CC: francois, markus.kell.r, pombredanne
Version: 3.0   
Target Milestone: 3.2 RC7   
Hardware: PC   
OS: Windows XP   
Whiteboard:

Description Dorian Birsan CLA 2004-05-25 13:56:02 EDT 
When searching for features, nested features are also downloaded.
Update should not download the feature jar unless the feature has been 
selected for install.
Comment 1 Dorian Birsan CLA 2005-06-15 11:53:49 EDT 
This has slightly been improved by not downloading the nested features of 
features that will be filtered out for other reasons.
Comment 2 Francois Granade CLA 2005-09-08 16:33:55 EDT 
I've tried to think about it, and I believe that the solution would be to put
more information about the available features in the "site.xml", practically
duplicating a lot of info that's available in the feature.xml for all the features.

Let's compare with the way blogs/webssites works with an RSS feed. I think we
can compare the "site.xml" to the "rss.rdf": they are both a summary of what's
available on a site; you can use it directly, by displaying the content, and/or
drill-down to get more info (the complete article for rss, the complete plugins
for site.xml); and the client can compute history, see what he has already
downloaded, to show only the new stuff to the user.

RSS files duplicate a *lot* of information that's available on the html pages,
and that's perfectly OK because the goal is to make it easier for clients to
access a summary, an index, of the site. I believe it's exactly the same for
site.xml: it's a summary, an index, of what's available. And an index's role is
also to ensure acceptable performance.

Since site.xml is completely under Eclipse.org's control, I think it would be OK
to add all the info to it. Then, looking at an update site would become a snap.
(I'm even being told that there's an extension point defined to extend site.xml
- I haven't looked myself though.
Comment 3 Branko Tripkovic CLA 2006-02-19 22:24:55 EST 
i agree. site.xml should be extended or some other file introduced that ha more information about features so that feature jars do not have to be downloaded.
Comment 4 Branko Tripkovic CLA 2006-06-22 18:46:29 EDT 

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 144876 ***