Generating p2 meta data from command line

Many times when working with Eclipse RCP I had to generate ad-hoc updatesites (usually containing some 3rd party plug-ins). What I usually did to achieve this (with Eclipse IDE):

• create new feature project
• add plug-ins to the feature
• create new updatesite project
• add the feature to the updatesite (pre-p2 style – site.xml)
• export newly created updatesite (letting Eclipse to deal with creating p2 meta data)

Since I needed to automate this process I started researching on p2 capabilities and found out that it can be done from command line using FeatureAndBundlesPublisher application. Sample command line invocation to do it:

%ECLIPSE_EXE% -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.publisher.FeaturesAndBundlesPublisher -metadataRepository file:/%P2_TARGET% -artifactRepository file:/%P2_TARGET% -source %P2_SRC% -compress -configs win32.win32.x86 -publishArtifacts

Where:

• ECLIPSE_EXE – points to Eclipse executable;
• P2_TARGET – path to an empty directory where p2 repository should be created;
• P2_SRC – path to the directory with /plugins subdirectory and plug-ins to be published (jar files) inside;
• -compress parameter is optional. It compresses artifacts.xml and content.xml to jar (zip) files.