I’m trying to install an Eclipse Product into an existing Eclipse installation using a third-party-tool (namely the IBM Installation Manager) but it fails with several errors of the kind
CRIMA1054E: Installing bundle “org.eclipse.equinox.p2.repository.tools_2.0.1.R36x_v20100823” into this existing Eclipse installation does not meet the version tolerance of “[2.0.100,3.0.0)” for the existing bundle “org.eclipse.pde.ui”
Unfortunately, I can’t disclose any specifics on the affected product, so I’d like to turn this into a more general question.
Following some research on the Eclipse platform, my understanding is that it is one of the key features of the OSGi Specification, that one should be able install multiple versions of the same bundle (≘ plugin?) into the same environment. If the bundle org.eclipse.pde.ui is already present, I assume that also its required version of the […].p2.repository.tools is already available.
My question: Why should it be a problem to just add another version of that plugin to the environment? Am I getting something terribly wrong about Eclipse and OSGi?
Side question: Shouldn’t version 2.0.1.R36[…] be inside [2.0.100,3.0.0) anyway? Doesn’t really affect my main question though, because I have other examples that are clearly out of tolerance.
Some initial thoughts and theories
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Even though Eclipse allows parallel versions of a plugin, some plugins still conflict with other versions of themselves. Still, then I would expect more of an error like “[…].repository.tools_x is incompatible with […].repository.tools_y which is required by existing bundle org.eclipse.pde.ui”
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The installation is not blocked by Eclipse but by the IBM Installation Manager. It probably does some internal dependency checking but is too lazy to consider parallel bundle version installs.
Again regarding that specific product: Unfortunately the product is not available through the regular Eclipse software installation mechanism. I also would like to avoid dropping it into my Eclipse manually because I’m dependent on regular updates and those are only delivered through the IBM Installation Manager.
Any Eclipse plug-ins that contribute UI must have the singleton directive set to true. This means that only one bundle with that symbolic name can be in the framework, see http://wiki.osgi.org/wiki/Bundle-SymbolicName for more info.
I went and inspected the org.eclipse.equinox.p2.repository.tools bundle in my version of Eclipse (3.8), and I can see that it does indeed have singleton=true.
You said: “2.0.1.R36[…] be inside [2.0.100,3.0.0)”
That’s not the case, as 2.0.1 is < 2.0.100.