Basic setup
The first step in setting up a build is to create the directory in which the build will take place. This directory will be referred to as the build directory and will contain the plug-ins and features to build as well as all the generated artifacts. Next, copy your plug-ins and features respectively into "plugins" and "features" subdirectories. Your product configuration file is expected to be in one of these plugins/features.
The second step in setting up a build is to copy the template build.properties file from org.eclipse.pde.build/templates/headless-build to a new directory which will be the build configuration directory (also referred to as the configuration directory). Edit the copied build.properties file and set the following properties:
product: the location of your product configuration file in the form "/<plugin or feature id>/path/to/.product"
baseLocation: the location of an eclipse install containing all the pre-built features and plug-ins that your product requires in features/ and plugins/ subdirectories. The RCP delta pack (it is available from the eclipse download page) is mandatory as it includes the org.eclipse.platform.launchers feature which contains the launchers and root files necessary for a product.
buildDirectory: the directory the build will take place in. Set this to the full path of the build directory created previously.
configs: list the configurations for which you want your product to be built. You can uncomment the configuration(s) provided (be careful of the line continuations).
archivePrefix: the name of the directory of your product once installed on disk.
Overview of the directory structure
<buildDirectory>/
plugins/
pluginToBuildA
pluginToBuildB
myProduct.product
...
features/
featureToBuild
...
<buildConfiguration>/
build.properties
<baseLocation>
plugins/
org.eclipse.core.runtime
...
features/
org.eclipse.rcp
org.eclipse.platform.launchers
...
Running the build
To run the build you will use the org.elipse.ant.core.antRunner application. When invoking eclipse with this application to perform a build you need to set two arguments on the command line:
-buildfile </path/to/productBuild.xml>: This is the path to the productBuild.xml provided by pde build. It is located in the org.eclipse.pde.build/scripts/productBuild directory. This is the build file that drives the whole product build process.
-Dbuilder=</path/to/configuration folder>: This is the path to the build configuration folder.
Run the antRunner application using the following command:
java -jar <eclipseInstall>/startup.jar -application org.eclipse.ant.core.antRunner -buildfile <<eclipseInstall>/plugins/org.eclipse.pde.build_<version>/scripts/productBuild/productBuild.xml> -Dbuilder=<path to the build configuration folder>
