The ZipTie Bundle Update/Install Mechanism

This mechanism provides ZipTie with the ability for installing additional functionality on top of an existing install.

Provides

In order to accomplish this the update mechanism must provide the ability to...

• install a set of bundles as a capability set (feature) that don't already exist in an instance,
• upgrade a set of bundles as a capability set (feature) that do already exist in an instance,
• install or upgrade artifacts outside the scope of an OSGi bundle set (this includes things like the eclipse executable), and
• run in both an eclipse context and as a pure set of OSGi bundles

Eclipse Update Manager Shortcomings

The existing update manager has no way of installing artifacts ouside the scope of plugins. Also for an update to work all plugins must be defined in a feature. While this is not bad in concept an eclipse feature exists as a folder on the filesystem which is a great deal of overhead when attempting to distribute a single bundle as a feature. To do so you must create a project for the sole purpose of maintaining the feature for a plugin.