This tutorial assumes that you have a basic understanding of development for the Eclipse platform. Please see Eclipse RCP Tutorial or Eclipse Plug-in Tutorial . It also assumes that you know how to create Eclipse feature projects. Please see Eclipse Feature and Fragment Tutorial for an introduction.

You should also know how to manually export products based on product configuration files, please see Eclipse product and deployment .

The following plug-in provide the non-user interface functionality of p2.

To update your Eclipse 4 application with p2 you use the p2 API.

The following code shows an example handler which performs an update of the whole Eclipse product. The method annotated with @Execute initializes the p2 and configures the location for both the artifact and metadata repository. Afterwards p2 has to check both repositories for changes and resolve new artifacts. The last step is to run the update.

package com.example.e4.rcp.todo.handler;

import java.net.URI;
import java.net.URISyntaxException;

import org.eclipse.core.runtime.IProgressMonitor;
import org.eclipse.core.runtime.IStatus;
import org.eclipse.core.runtime.Status;
import org.eclipse.core.runtime.jobs.IJobChangeEvent;
import org.eclipse.core.runtime.jobs.Job;
import org.eclipse.core.runtime.jobs.JobChangeAdapter;
import org.eclipse.e4.core.di.annotations.Execute;
import org.eclipse.e4.ui.di.UISynchronize;
import org.eclipse.e4.ui.workbench.IWorkbench;
import org.eclipse.equinox.p2.core.IProvisioningAgent;
import org.eclipse.equinox.p2.operations.ProvisioningJob;
import org.eclipse.equinox.p2.operations.ProvisioningSession;
import org.eclipse.equinox.p2.operations.Update;
import org.eclipse.equinox.p2.operations.UpdateOperation;
import org.eclipse.jface.dialogs.MessageDialog;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Shell;

// Require-Bundle: org.eclipse.equinox.p2.core|engine|operation|metadata.repository
// Feature: org.eclipse.equinox.p2.core.feature
//
// !!! Do not run from within IDE. Update only works in an exported product !!!
//
public class UpdateHandler {
  private static final String REPOSITORY_LOC = System.getProperty("UpdateHandler.Repo", "http://localhost/repository");

  @Execute
  public void execute(final IProvisioningAgent agent, final Shell parent,
      final UISynchronize sync, final IWorkbench workbench) {
    Job j = new Job("Update Job") {
      private boolean doInstall = false;

      /*
       * (non-Javadoc)
       * 
       * @see
       * org.eclipse.core.runtime.jobs.Job#run(org.eclipse.core.runtime
       * .IProgressMonitor)
       */
      @Override
      protected IStatus run(final IProgressMonitor monitor) {

        /* 1. Prepare update plumbing */

        final ProvisioningSession session = new ProvisioningSession(agent);
        final UpdateOperation operation = new UpdateOperation(session);

        // Create uri
        URI uri = null;
        try {
          uri = new URI(REPOSITORY_LOC);
        } catch (URISyntaxException e) {
          sync.syncExec(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
              MessageDialog
              .openError(parent, "URI invalid", e.getMessage());
            }
          });
          return Status.CANCEL_STATUS;
        }

        // Set location of artifact and metadata repo
        // (Explain difference between meta und artifact repo)
        operation.getProvisioningContext().setArtifactRepositories(new URI[] { uri });
        operation.getProvisioningContext().setMetadataRepositories(new URI[] { uri });

        /* 2. Check for updates */

        // Run update checks causing I/O
        final IStatus status = operation.resolveModal(monitor);

        // Failed to find updates (inform user and exit)
        if (status.getCode() == UpdateOperation.STATUS_NOTHING_TO_UPDATE) {
          sync.syncExec(new Runnable() {
            /*
             * (non-Javadoc)
             * 
             * @see java.lang.Runnable#run()
             */
            @Override
            public void run() {
              MessageDialog
                  .openWarning(parent, "No update",
                      "No updates for the current installation have been found");
            }
          });
          return Status.CANCEL_STATUS;
        }

        /* 3. Ask if updates should be installed and run installation */

        // found updates, ask user if to install?
        if (status.isOK() && status.getSeverity() != IStatus.ERROR) {
          sync.syncExec(new Runnable() {

            /*
             * (non-Javadoc)
             * 
             * @see java.lang.Runnable#run()
             */
            @Override
            public void run() {
              String updates = "";
              Update[] possibleUpdates = operation
                  .getPossibleUpdates();
              for (Update update : possibleUpdates) {
                updates += update + "\n";
              }
              doInstall = MessageDialog.openQuestion(parent,
                  "Relly install updates?", updates);
            }
          });
        }

        // Install! (causing I/0)
        if (doInstall) {
          final ProvisioningJob provisioningJob = operation
              .getProvisioningJob(monitor);
          // Updates cannot run from within Eclipse IDE!!!
          if (provisioningJob == null) {
            System.err
                .println("Running update from within Eclipse IDE? This won't work!!!");
            throw new NullPointerException();
          }

          // Register a job change listener to track
          // installation progress and notify user upon success
          provisioningJob
              .addJobChangeListener(new JobChangeAdapter() {
                @Override
                public void done(IJobChangeEvent event) {
                  if (event.getResult().isOK()) {
                    sync.syncExec(new Runnable() {

                      @Override
                      public void run() {
                        boolean restart = MessageDialog
                            .openQuestion(parent,
                                "Updates installed, restart?",
                                "Updates have been installed successfully, do you want to restart?");
                        if (restart) {
                          workbench.restart();
                        }
                      }
                    });

                  }
                  super.done(event);
                }
              });

          provisioningJob.schedule();
        }
        return Status.OK_STATUS;
      }
    };
    j.schedule();
  }
} 

Create a Eclipse 4 RCP project called com.example.e4.rcp.todo based on the Eclipse 4 wizard.

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