Feature Based Products

Feature based products are the way to go. They are easy in maintenance, p2 aware and we have some support for them in Eclipse. However, features are not a development artifact. They are releng artifacts. Then, after a few cycles of hacking at bundles, the time comes to bundle the bundles into features. Making a good separation into features requires some wizard like qualities, but to find the features for other bundles requires a fair amount of guessing, knowing and, of course searching.

Look no more

Inside Eclipse there is some API that enables us to retrieve the installed features and go right into the bundles that are associated with that feature. Available in the Market Place is a view that is called the "Feature Explorer". It uses this information to show the current platform features and contains a search box. You type the name of the bundle into the search box and the view tells you in which feature(s) is it bundled.

Thanks to the Waldo guys for letting me use their stuff!