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On Okt. 20, 2010 Apple announced the App Store for the Mac OS X Lion operating system, which will be released in the mid of 2011. I think it would be very cool when developers would be able to install Eclipse directly with the app store and receive automatically updates for service releases and so on. Take a look at the App Store here: http://www.apple.com/mac/app-store/ I know it's really early to investigate in it. But to have a bug for it can't harm. There is one thing that should be checked first before investigate into this technology: Are Java based applications allowed within the Mac App Store? Another cool thing would be to provide a facility (API, project, Tools or something similar) to support people to ship their RCP apps with the Mac App Store.
This won't happen anytime soon. Here are a few things from the Mac App Store review guidelines (published yesterday) that _might_ be problematic for Eclipse: - Apps must be packaged and submitted using Apple's packaging technologies included in Xcode - no third party installers allowed - Apps that present a license screen at launch will be rejected That things that _will_ be problematic for Eclipse: - Apps must be self-contained, single application installation bundles, and cannot install code or resources in shared locations - Apps that download or install additional code or resources to add functionality or change their primary purpose will be rejected - Apps that require license keys or implement their own copy protection will be rejected (regarding third-party plugins) - Apps may not use update mechanisms outside of the App Store - Apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, Rosetta) will be rejected .... I could probably go on as these are only the issues I see in the first paragraph. Eclipse in the Mac App Store probaby won't happen anytime soon - my personal guess.
I'd agree with comment 2; the app rules are sufficiently wide-reaching that spending any significant time to make it happen without knowing if it would work is probably a no-go. They've only just dropped their requirement for everything to be in Objective-C, but they still have a 'rejected if it doesn't meet Apple's HIG' statement, which arguably might apply to Eclipse RCP applications. The other aspect is the souring of Apple's stance towards Java http://alblue.bandlem.com/2010/10/apple-deprecates-java.html it's fairly likely that when 10.7 comes out in Summer 2011, Apple won't be supplying it with a JVM by default (or even providing one as an optional install). Even if they let apps on there now, they might not even be able to run in the future. The best way to test this out is to submit an Eclipse RCP application (or several) to the Mac App store, and if that pans out, consider any Eclipse tooling for it. But realistically, the tooling isn't likely to be that much - say, bindings for the Eclipse marketplace client - the issue is firmly on the Apple side. Alex (And I say this as a staunch OSX fan, for those that think I'm just dissing the platform...)
Re some of the points in comment #2- - bundling an RCP app the Mac way is easy - check out http://www.yoursway.com/free/#repackager as a way to convert an RCP build to a .app; creating a DMG is then only a simple script away from there - update mechanisms - turning off RCP self-update is easy enough, presumably folks then get your new version after you submit it to Apple (ok, they'll *eventually* get it) - license keys/copy protection - I'm not familiar with App Store licensing, is there an API? Can't just be "if they have it they must've paid for it"? What's to stop copying the app to another Mac etc. Will bytecode obfuscation be grounds for app rejection? I'm more than happy to test the waters and submit my app (www.neckdiagrams.com) after making some appropriate modifiactions to try to meet the bar. Can't remember now if I enrolled onto the Mac Dev Program... will have to investigate this deeper at the weekend. Justin
@Justin: sure, you can strip away everything that makes an RCP application an RCP application just to make Apple happy ;-) But please, try to submit your your RCP application and see how far you can get! I think everyone agrees that it is a good idea at least to test it and see what happens.
Guys, this should be WONTFIX. From the Mac App Store guidelines, specifically 2.24: "Apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, Rosetta) will be rejected" http://www.cultofmac.com/apples-mac-app-store-approval-guidelines/65022
Alex, you beat me to the punch. According to section 2.24: "apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g. Java) will be rejected". Here's a link to the pdf: http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/mac-app-review.pdf
Does anyone know if there have been or will be changes to the App Store guidelines WRT to OpenJDK moves, etc..? I'm not so much thinking about the Eclipse IDE as a whole here -- I think that developers who want to will figure out how to install it -- but as delivered RCP apps. There is a whole market here that would be opened up that seems closed now for RCP developers if this could be figured out. > @Justin: sure, you can strip away everything that makes an RCP application an RCP application just to make Apple happy ;-) But please, try to submit your your RCP application and see how far you can get! Well I think we would't lose that much..just auto-updating, etc.. And actually I'm thinking that e4 will be a better choice i.e. Kizby.. http://eclipse.dzone.com/articles/kizby-interview. But yes, what we need is for someone to actually try it and see what happens. :)
(In reply to comment #6) > Alex, you beat me to the punch. > > According to section 2.24: "apps that use deprecated or optionally installed > technologies (e.g. Java) will be rejected". > > Here's a link to the pdf: > > http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/mac-app-review.pdf The only issue is that Apple's Java SE 6 is both deprecated and optionally installed on Lion. If Eclipse embeds it's own OpenJDK-based JRE/JDK, that goes a long way to enabling Mac App Store distribution.
Apparently someone has managed to submit a Java app to the Mac app store. Its not RCP so wondering if there is a way to do this using RCP - http://intransitione.com/blog/take-java-to-app-store/
Thank you for the suggestion. There are no plans within the EPP project of supporting the App Store.
