How do I build an Eclipse RCP app so that its features can be updated automatically?

Question

I am building an RCP application that will be made up of several Features.

My RCP application is configured to check for updates each time it starts. My current probl

Answer 1

After a long search, I have found the answer. It's kind of a kludge, but I'm willing to do anything at this point. My solution is dependent upon the fact that my built RCP application includes p2 application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director. I guess if your RCP app doesn't contain this application, you can refer to another Eclipse install in order to launch the Director. I just did it this way to avoid having an instance of Eclipse sitting on my build machine.

I used the p2-dev mailing list, and Paul Webster answered my question. (Thanks Paul)

He suggested using ant to launch the p2 director application to install the IU into my built RCP application.

Here's his answer on the p2-dev mailing list http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/p2-dev/msg04735.html

Here's the ant target I came up with.

  
    
  
  
  -installIU ${iu.id} 
  
      
      
      
      
      
      
  

  

I put this in an ant file in the same project that produces my Eclipse RCP application via Tycho. Tycho produces my build artifacts in a directory called "target" so my parameters to the ant target above look like this...

I have a few more of these targets for each platform that my RCP application is built for.

Hope this helps.

UPDATE: May 8th, 2014. Tobias has brought it to my attention that I should change the accepted answer from this one to the one that has the new feature that was added to Tycho 0.20.0 that enables this behavior in a much more simple fashion. So, the new accepted answer is the proper solution for this question now.