Repackage update site into one feature

Question

I have an update site that contains some 100 - 200 features and many more plugins. For some users all of these are needed, so I'd like to simplify the installation process by creating one feature that they can install. This feature would then contain all the contents of the update site.

I've created a new feature project and my plan is to add the contents of the original update site as included features and plugins in this project.

Problems is; In my feature project, when adding feature in the "included features" tab, I can only add features that are currently installed in my Eclipse platform. I'd rather not install those 200 features just so I can add them.

Is there a way to work around this?

Just curious...you said that you don't want to install the feaures from your update site, but that you expect that users will? Why would you expect users to want to install these 200 features if you don't? — Andrew Eisenberg

Andrew Eisenberg Andrew Eisenberg · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-13T21:19:19

Without the features installed in your target platform, you will need to edit the feature.xml file directly. All you need to do is to add the following for each feature that you want to include:

<includes
     id="<add_feature_id>"
     version="0.0.0"/>

Your build process (PDE or tycho) should add the proper version numbers for you.

Repackage update site into one feature

3 Answers