This Ant script, originally written several years ago and previously hosted on this site, is now available on GitHub.
At the time the script was created, Eclipse was still relatively new. While it offered extensibility, many essential features were left to plugin developers. As a result, Eclipse users often found themselves waiting anxiously for new builds or updated versions of key plugins.
However, updating Eclipse — or its plugins — was anything but straightforward. There were many undocumented or poorly documented rules, and plugin packaging conventions varied widely. Manual installation was common, and sometimes updates introduced compatibility issues that could render a workspace unusable. The script addressed all these issues and was easily customizable; sometimes you just need a command line tool.
It's hard to estimate how widely the script was used, but there were signs of the script usage: user emails with questions, feature requests, suggestions, and code contributions. The script was reviewed in several blogs and newsgroups; and, for a time, it ranked at the top of Google search results for "Ant script." At the time Apache Ant itself was gaining popularity as a build tool - an alternative to UNIX make utility - and this script extended Ant’s utility.
The following text was written alongside the script’s initial release. While some statements may now seem dated, they’ve been left untouched to preserve the context and spirit of the time:
Eclipse is a great IDE. It is relatively new and the speed with which Eclipse team introduces new features is amazing. However, my first update to a new Eclipse build was rather time consuming; and from reading news I realized that other developers were struggling with updates too. The script simplified updates and, over time, evolved to incorporate some other related activities. All the documentation is in the Readme file. One chapter in the Readme file, named What is the Right Way to Update?, is different from the other chapters as this chapter is not about how to use the script but rather why and when to use it.
You can download a zip file from this site or just browse Readme file online. Latest changes are in Release Notes. It is worth noting that Eclipse comes with the Update Manager but it seems to be for major releases and not for builds. The primary audience for this script is developers who update Eclipse quite often.
Read What Others Have Said:
http://youarenumber6.blogspot.com/2004/08/departmental-eclipse-with-ant.html
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