Description Jeff McAffer 2010-10-13 15:04:38 EDT

The standard Eclipse executable runs a windowing oriented setup.  Even if you spec -console, on many systems you do not get a text console window.  In the Eclipse platform builds we have some special tricks for example, on the mac we create a symbolic link from "eclipse" to /Eclipse.app/Contents/Macosx/eclipse (or some such).  There is not however a generic easy to use way for RCP and Equinox developers to do these things.  Looking at the Mac situation with linking, the possible mechanisms are

- Create a feature that has a root.macosx.link statement.  Unfortunatly, a) there is a bug in p2 that requires some extra tricks and b) the link names are not branded according to the .product executable naming so you need a different feature for every product.

- use p2.inf files to create the link.  This works but a) requires users to dive into the arcane p2.inf format and b) the inf file directives are not branded according to the .product executable naming so you need a different p2.inf (and dir structure) for every product.

There are also similar problems on Windows where you need the equivalent of eclipsec.exe. There you have to spec that as a root file and then it is not renamed, ... 

Really there should be a check box that says, "include console launcher" and the right thing should be done for the platform at hand.