[wtp-dev] Change to WTP Retention Policy: repos are forever

[David M Williams <david_williams@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I have update our WTP retention policy,
found at 

http://wiki.eclipse.org/WTP/Retention_Policy

The substantial change was that our
update site repositories will now exist forever, to line up with current
recommended practice. 

This is partially a result of the Equinox
Team twisting my arm ... er, I mean educating me ... that this really is
required, to achieve the P2 potential (and in fact the common Simultaneous
Release repositories will now be persistent), and it also partially a result
of me learning how to do it so its not too much extra work and little risk
of damaging things. (All through the magic of composite repositories).


There probably are a few extra (small)
complications we'll have to deal with, over time. One is what to do about
feature's update site URL's, should they all point to /webtools/updates
as they do now? Or should we make them specific to a particular version
(such as /webtools/updates/3.2). (I think the latter, see bug 291637).
Another is the "categories" for the features (they currently
have WTP versions in them, which seems more awkward as repositories grow
larger). Another is performance. In theory, the more stuff you put in a
repository, the slower it will be to install something, so we'll need to
have the ability to narrow the repository URL, while allowing high level
URLs too ... but I'm not sure what the balance is without more experience
and testing. 

Overall, though, it should make rolling
out updates easier, from both an infrastructure point of view, and user
experience. 

Let me know if anyone has any questions,
suggestions, complaints, objections, or caveats about the new policy. 

Thanks,