What is the difference between 'Included Features' and 'Dependencies'?

Question

When defining an OSGi/ Eclipse RCP feature, I can define Included Plug-ins, Included Features and Dependencies.

I would like to know what is really the difference between these things and what exactly will the Eclipse RCP Runtime do with these different information?

Answer 1

'Include Plug-ins' are plugins that are part of this feature. They will included in the RCP build.

'Included Features' are other features that will be included in the RCP build when you include this feature. It is quite common to have a feature for each component of a large RCP (like Eclipse) with a top level feature including the component features.

'Dependencies' are other plugins and features that you are saying your feature depends on. This is mainly for features which you export as 'deployable features' rather than an RCP build. The feature install will check that the dependencies are already installed when installing this feature.

Answer 2

In addition to greg-449's answer:

what exactly will the Eclipse ECP Runtime do with these different information?

The runtime won't do anything really with the feature contents, unless you are installing/updating features. The feature.xml are a build/install/update "thing" that describes inclusions and dependencies.

Said in another way, if you create a standalone product, you don't need to have any feature.xmls for your product to work ok. In the .product file, list included plug-ins (after setting The product configuration is based on to plug-ins in the Overview tab)