Feature manifest editor

The feature manifest editor uses the same concepts seen in the other PDE editors.

Feature manifest editor - Overview page

Information that is entered during the feature project setup can be changed on the Overview page. In addition, you can provide anr update site URL to be used by the Update Manager when searching for new updates. 

Branding information for primary features is stored in a branding plug-in. If not explicitly set, Eclipse will assume that the branding plug-in has the same identifier as the feature.

By default, your feature is treated as universally portable. You can add constraints by providing supported operating/windowing systems, languages and/or system architectures. This information will be used to ensure that your feature is not installed or shown in the context that does not match these constraints.

Feature manifest editor - Information page

Features are required to provide description, license and copyright information. This information can be edited on the Information page. Each of these three categories can be represented as either text or a URL that points to a valid HTML page. Although URL can be absolute, HTML pages are typically provided with the feature and URLs are relative to the project root.

The Sites To Visit tab lists URLs that are used to point users to other interesting features and/or sites.

Feature manifest editor - Content page

The plug-ins and fragments to be packaged in this feature are listed on the Plug-ins page. If a plug-in and/or fragment contains platform-specific code, then environment conditions should be specified and associated with that plug-in or fragment.

Included Features

A feature may include other features, thus creating a feature hierarchy. When the feature is built, all included features are recursively built and packaged.

Feature dependencies

This section lists all features and plug-ins that must be present in the product before the Update Manager installs this feature. If any of these pre-requisites is missing, the feature will not be installed. The requirement can be based solely on plug-in IDs, or further constrained using expected versions and match rules.

Feature Installations page

In addition to plug-ins, opaque data entries can be specified to carry custom feature information. These entries usually come together with custom install handlers. Install handlers can be used to perform non-standard install tasks and manipulate data entries once they are downloaded by the Update Manager. You can read more about this and other feature issues in Platform Install and Update guide.