The EPP Build

The Eclipse Packaging Project (EPP) provides the download packages based on the content of the yearly Simultaneous Release. The download packages are provided from www.eclipse.org/downloads/eclipse-packages/.

Creating and releasing packages

Please see RELEASING.md in this repo for instructions on the release process for the EPP project.

Build Locally

It's easy to run the build locally! All you need is Maven:

mvn clean verify

will build all the packages (using automatically activated profiles) and the resulting zip/tar/dmg will be in packages/org.eclipse.epp.package.${PACKAGE}.product/target/products. In addition the combined p2 site will be in archive/repository.

Build a single package

If you want to build just a single package add the profile for the package you want to build, along with the profile to materialize the product:

mvn verify -Pepp.p2.common -Pepp.product.cpp -Pepp.p2.cpp -Pepp.materialize-products

This build creates output in two places:

1. tar.gz/zip/dmg archives with the packages in archive/ and
2. a p2 repository with the EPP artifacts in archive/repository/.

Build a single platform

By default the maven build runs the build for all platforms, this can be time consuming and can be changed to only build a limited number of platforms, a useful thing to do for testing changes locally. There is no profile (PRs welcome!) to disabled other platforms, instead modify releng/org.eclipse.epp.config/parent/pom.xml to exclude the unwanted platforms in target-platform-configuration's configuration.

Windows users

In the past the last step in the build process used to fail. For further details see bug 426416. If that happens again you can omit the verify stage and simply package.

mvn clean package -Pepp.package.rcp -Pepp.materialize-products

Available Profiles

Each package uses its own profile, with the zip/tar/dmg in packages/org.eclipse.epp.package.${PACKAGE}.product/target/products. With the epp.materialize-products profile the zip/tar/dmg will be created, otherwise only the p2 site will be created.

• epp.package.committers
• epp.package.cpp
• epp.package.embedcpp
• epp.package.dsl
• epp.package.java
• epp.package.jee
• epp.package.modeling
• epp.package.php
• epp.package.rcp
• epp.package.scout

macOS dmg files can only be created within the Eclipse Foundation network. To enable creating dmg files enable the eclipse-package-dmg profile. Without eclipse-package-dmg enabled, the .tar.gz for macOS will be created regardless.

With the signing profiles enabled, the build artifacts (bundles, features) and the Windows and macOS executables are signed. This is done by using the Eclipse Foundation internal signing service and can be activated only if the build is running there.

• eclipse-sign-jar profile enables signing of the EPP bundles and jar files
• eclipse-sign-mac profile enables usage of macOS signing service
• eclipse-sign-dmg profile enables signing of the DMG files for the macOS platform (the eclipse-package-dmg needs to be enabled too!)
• eclipse-sign-windows profile enables usage of Windows signing service

Additional Configuration Possibilities

By default, the EPP build uses the content of the Eclipse Simultaneous Release Staging repository at https://download.eclipse.org/staging/2025-03/ as input. Sometimes it is desired to build against another release (e.g. a different milestone), or against a local mirror of this repository. This can be achieved by setting the Java property eclipse.simultaneous.release.repositoryto another URL. As an example, by adding the following argument to the Maven command line, the EPP build will read its input from the composite Eclipse 2025-03 repository:

-Declipse.simultaneous.release.repository="https://download.eclipse.org/releases/2025-03"

EPP Configuration File format

The individual EPP packages have a special file called epp.website.xml that defines various pieces of information about the package. The format of the file is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
 <!-- Package Description information to be picked up by www.eclipse.org/packages -->
 <!-- PackageName is the title of your package
      maintainer is the project or persons that are maintaining the package
      iconurl is the fully qualified URL to the icon you wish to use on the site (48x48)
      bugzillaComponentID is used to gather bugzilla information about your package.
         This should be given to you after provisioning of the package is finished
      testPlan is the fully qualified URL to the test plan for this package
   -->
  <packageMetaData
   packageName="Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers"
   maintainer="Eclipse Packaging Project"
   iconurl="http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/images/c.jpg"
   bugzillaComponentId="cpp-package"
   testPlan="http://www.eclipse.org/epp/testplan.php" >

     <!-- Description is wrapped in CDATA tags to allow you to insert HTML code if necessary -->
     <description><![CDATA[An IDE for C/C++ developers.]]></description>

     <!-- packageTesters is a list of the people that are testing the package -->
     <packageTesters>
       <tester>Markus Knauer</tester>
    </packageTesters>

  </packageMetaData>

...

</configuration>