Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Remediation support, goodbye cryptic p2 dependency error message.

Thanks to the sponsoring of JBoss, you can now say goodbye to the cryptic dependency error messages. Indeed, starting with Eclipse Kepler, when p2 is not able to complete the requested installation, it proactively searches for alternate ways to help you proceed.

This search for alternate solutions is done automatically as soon as p2 realizes that it can't proceed with the installation. No special action required. Once the search is complete, your only work is to select one of the solution discovered in the dialog as shown below.



Beyond the improved user experience, I believe this is an important improvement in the consumability of the Eclipse ecosystem since users now have a much higher chance of completing their install, rather than just giving up or downloading a new version of eclipse to try their install there.

Enjoy, and don't forget to thanks JBoss.