eclipse update site not updating

Question

I'm producing plugin's for eclipse - but for some reason when I build a new version of the plugin - the update site isn't noticing it.

The build process says that the plugins should be at version 1.1.0.201209191506, but when I access to install I'm shown these versions:

The XML file looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<site>
   <feature url="features/supportStructuresForCSFEditing -_1.1.0.201209191506.jar" id="supportStructuresForCSFEditing -" version="1.1.0.201209191506">
      <category name="plancomps"/>
   </feature>
   <feature url="features/supportStructuresForCSFEditingTest -_1.1.0.201209191506.jar" id="supportStructuresForCSFEditingTest -" version="1.1.0.201209191506">
      <category name="plancomps"/>
   </feature>
   <category-def name="plancomps" label="plancomps"/>
</site>

and this happens if I'm installing from local or from the web - any idea what might be happening? Or diagnostic tricks I could try?

EDIT - there have been restarts of the machine - and attempts from machines that have never seen the plugin's before - all have shown the old versions. :(

Answer 1

I'd check two things.

1) I think that due to a bug, sometimes features are removed from category (if you use GUI to update your site). So you might be looking at your plug-ins in your category, when latest version is at top level or vice-versa.

2) Eclipse caches current state of update site. So you need to restart, to make it show newer versions.

Answer 2

Most likely, your cache is not being updated. p2 will often cache update site content information. It looks like you are using old style update sites and that you do not have a content.xml(or .jar) and a artifact.xml(or .jar), which is not really supported any more and may make it harder to delete the cache.

Here are somethings you can try:

1. Help -> Install new software -> Available software sites -> (Select your update site) -> Reload
2. Delete and re-add your update site
3. Restart eclipse with the -clean option to clear out the configuration area

But, really you should be making sure that you are creating artifact.xml and content.xml (or .jar) and creating proper update sites.

Answer 3

Okay, so coming back to this I have a reason and a workaround.

Eclipse's caching is pretty aggressive. But something I was doing wasn't helping and I thought I'd share.

When I was building a new version of the plugin, I was deleting the previous one (which made sense to me, generally the previous one was an internal buggy thing and I could have always reconstructed it from the svn). However when I started leaving the previous versions in, the update site started working much more as expected.