Bug 94141

Comment 1 Ed Burnette 2005-05-13 10:06:26 EDT

Pascal, do you want to take responsibility for this one?

I'm goint to start directing people with JNLP questions to come here and add
their comments for things they'd like to see in the article that they're having
a hard time figuring out on their own.

Comment 2 Pascal Rapicault 2005-05-13 10:32:27 EDT

Sure.
However note that since I will be writing the help section on this topic, an
article might no longer be necessary (see bug #85029).

Comment 3 Christian Schaefer 2005-05-13 11:13:38 EDT

We would be interested in using jnlp within a running RCP Application to lazy
download mini-ui jar files, which represents one or a view ui-masks only like
html but only once until a new version is available. 

it is 'easy' to launch the overall rcp core runtime via webstart, but what about
using jnlp as a lazy product updater and installer.

the idea is to fully avoid any product installation except a base product.

the rcp core runtime an some additional custom launching code can be installed
by traditional software installation processes or maybe also webstart, but in
our case we would install a jre and rcp and a browser as a basic requirement.

the installation of the full application (all features and plugins) should be
avoided as far as possible, because this would require a lot of time, and within
a business application only a part of the overall application is used.

Comment 4 Geoff Draper 2005-06-21 15:49:03 EDT

(Posted on eclipse.platform.rcp, 20 June 2005)

First of all, THANK YOU to Pascal for writing the new Java Web Start 
documentation for Eclipse 3.1RC3. It helps to have all the concepts tied 
together like this.
 
However, I do have some constructive feedback for the documentation. Here goes:
 
In Step 1:
* Is "wrappering" the correct word in this context?  Would "wrapper" be more 
concise?
* The instructions say: "Create a feature including all the features that are 
listed in your product definition."  Does this refer to just the plug-ins that 
are unique to our product, or all the dependencies as well?
* The instructions say: "Copy in a folder of your feature the startup.jar."  
Does this mean: "Copy the startup.jar file into your feature's folder"?
* When we add the "root=" line to build.properties, should we specify the 
absolute path, or the relative path?  If relative, should the folder just be "." 
(dot)?
 
In Step 2:
* At the phrase "You need to use keytool", you may wish to add a hyperlink to 
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/javaws/developersguide/development.
html#signing which provides an excellent overview of how to use keytool.
* "File > Export > Features" should be "File > Export > Deployable Features"
 
In Step 3:
* No questions.
 
In the section "Plug-ins based application"
* This section is very confusing to me (maybe it's just me!).  I thought _all_ 
of the instructions thus far were specifically for plugin-based (RCP) 
applications.  Why a separate section for it?  Weren't we told to create a 
wrappering feature in Step 1?  Are we supposed to create a second wrappering 
feature, different from the first?  Any additional words of clarification for 
this section would be very appreciated.
 
In general:
* Every occurrence of the word "than" in the document can be safely replaced 
with "as".
 
I hope this helps for RC4 and beyond!  Please let me know if you have any 
questions or want clarification on any of my comments herein posted.
 
Thanks,
Geoff

Comment 5 Neil Bartlett 2005-07-27 05:34:22 EDT

Thanks to all (especially Mr Rapicault) for your work on JWS launching for RCP
apps. I followed the documented process and it works very nicely.

However at the moment I still have to deploy my application using a series of
clicks in my IDE. I really need to automate this from my ANT build. Has anybody
been able to create a build.xml that they can run outside of Eclipse to build
all the artifacts for a JNLP deployment?

Comment 6 Pascal Rapicault 2005-07-27 05:44:24 EDT

Nothing has been done to this extent. However from experience, I've noticed that the main jnlp file 
does not change much so you should be able to get a pretty good level of automation.
For further discussion, I recommand that you enter a feature request against pde build.

Comment 7 Ed Burnette 2005-07-27 15:32:09 EDT

Since this seems adequately covered in the 3.1 documentation a seperate article
is not necessary. Closing.

FYI here's a link to the doc:

http://help.eclipse.org/help31/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/guide/java_web_start.htm

If there are any problems with the doc please open seperate bugzilla entries on
them.