Trim your builds with p2 repository tools

The Eclipse Project has the unusual distinction of consuming the most download space of any project at eclipse.org.   Therefore, I like bugs with a request to "get rid of stuff" versus "add more stuff".  Recently, I fixed a bug to remove the packed jars from our zipped repositories that are available for download.

For example, we provide RCP binary and RCP source zipped repositories on our download page. Last week, these zips included both packed (*.jar.pack.gz) and unpacked (*.jar) bundles.

We don't need to include both types of jars in these downloads because most people will install the bundles locally from the zip.   The packed jars are included by default because when I run the mirror tool against the full build repository to create the slice, it already includes the packed jars.  You can use the remove.iu tool to query the repository for a list of all bundles and remove the associated packed jars.

<p2.remove.iu>
        <repository location="file://${yourRepo}">
        <iu artifacts="(format=packed)" query="">
</iu>

The remove.iu tool will remove the packed bundles from the repository and update the artifacts.jar accordingly.

As I have written before, repository tools are very useful for creating subcomponents of existing respositories.

Remove IU

Slicing and Dicing the p2 way

Want to learn more about using p2 to assemble products out of pre-existing components? Plan on attending the From build to assembly to deployment: Using p2 to facilitate agile software development tutorial that Ian Bull and I will be presenting at EclipseCon.