Description John Bossom 2005-08-24 14:37:18 EDT

The feature manifest permits you to specify relative paths to "nonPlugin Data".
and specifies "Select non-plug-in data archives that should be packaged in 
this feature". For instance, if you specify "mydata.zip",
non-plugin data is subsequently packaged up into the feature jar file along 
side the "feature.xml" file.
However, if you then include this feature as part of an update site and 
generate the site, you will not be able to install the feature from that site.

Reason:
The non-plugin data is bundled up inside the feature JAR file, whereas the
update code attempts to download it from the update site, independent of
the feature JAR, as

        <protocol>://blah/mysite/features/myfeature_1.0.0/mydata.zip

in the update site.

There is a discrepancy here. You cannot generate an update site that works.
To satisfy the update code, you have to manually unpack the feature jar file
on the site. This also implies that the nonplugin data is downloaded twice...
(implicitly since it is bundled inside the feature JAR and explicitly from the
 directory)

Either the non-plugin data should be obtained from within the JAR (instead
of explicitly loading it as per the documentation) or it should not be bundled 
in the feature JAR... and the PDE should assist in building a correct update 
site.

Comments?

P.S. I was attempting to leverage the non-plugin data to provide input to my 
own global install handler (via nonPluginDataLoaded)

John.