Description Nick Boldt 2011-01-25 21:40:05 EST

So, I have a half-dozen update sites in my Eclipse.

When I check for updates, one of them throws this message into my log:

!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.core 2 0 2011-01-25 13:37:48.382
!MESSAGE Error parsing composite repository
!SUBENTRY 1 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.core 2 0 2011-01-25 13:37:48.382
!MESSAGE Error at line 3, column 156: Missing required attribute in "repository": version

(Actually, I get 5 similar errors on line 3 at different column markers from various sites who've made this similar mistake.)

Anyway, after some deduction and process-of-elimination, I managed to figure out that this is due to http://m2eclipse.sonatype.org/sites/m2e-extras/compositeArtifacts.xml and/or http://m2eclipse.sonatype.org/sites/m2e-extras/compositeContent.xml

But the effort required to throw guess URLs at a server for each of the update sites from which I'm getting updates is significantly more than the effort that could be used to spit out an error message to simply tell the user:

 "The site at URL {0} is missing the attribute {1} in node {2}: {3}."

where:

 {0} -> URL
 {1} -> version
 {2} -> repository
 {3} -> line contents

Then, geeks like me could report the problem to the site's owner more easily and get stuff like this fixed.

...

Of course a warning message like this, which doesn't reflect any actual impedance to installation from the site (since the version is evidently assumed to be "1" or something), could also simply be suppressed entirely.