Import and install required plugin bundles in Eclipse PDE

Question

I created a new plugin project in Eclipse for RCP and RAP Developers (Oxygen).

I now want to use (for example) Jimfs within my plugin, so I have to add this to my plugin dependencies.

The solution that works , but which is not satisfying at all:

• Add Jimfs to the Maven dependencies
• Copy Jimfs and and all its dependencies to a lib folder within my project. (I use a plugin for this)
• Add the bin -Folder to the bin.includes configuration in the build.properties file
• Add lib/jimfs-1.1.jar to the Bundle-ClassPath section of META-INF/MANIFEST.MF

What I want and how I think this should work:

Add Jimfs to the Required Plugins section of this window . However, when I click Add the plugin is not available in the list. How do I make it available as a plugin?

Also, if someone imports my plugin project then I want the required plugin to be automatically downloaded from the internet. How do I achieve this?

Answer 1

Only code which is written to be an Eclipse plugin can be added as a dependency. The current method that you are using is correct for a non-plugin jar.

You could write a plugin which just contains the Jimfs jar. You would use the same procedure to include the jar and use Export-Package in the MANIFEST.MF to make the packages in the jar available.