Creating assets for provisioning

You can submit assets, such as Eclipse plug-ins or custom extensions of Eclipse-based plug-ins, and then share those assets. When you create an asset that includes an Eclipse update site artifact as content, a link is created to the update site. You can point an Eclipse update manager to this link and install the extensions that are defined on that site.

About this task

For IBM® Rational® Software Architect, you must configure the repository in a specific way so that you can submit assets. For more information, see Rational Software Architect: Share items by using Rational Asset Manager. Follow the Procedure to create an asset that people can use to install software into their Eclipse clients.

Procedure

  1. Create and describe a new asset, as described in Creating and describing assets in the web client or Creating assets in the Eclipse client.
  2. Attach artifacts that comprise an Eclipse update site. An Eclipse update site contains a site.xml file and usually includes a plugins folder and a features folder. For more information about attaching artifacts, see Attaching artifacts to assets in the web client or Attaching artifacts to assets in the Eclipse client.
  3. When you are finished describing the asset and attaching artifacts, click Save. If you are modifying an existing asset, click Update.
  4. Log in to the Rational Asset Manager web client.
  5. Click My dashboard.
  6. In the My Assets section, click the name of the asset that you created. On a large repository, the new asset might not be immediately available.
  7. On the general details page for the asset, click Content.
  8. On the Content page, find the site.xml file that you attached to the asset. Next to the site.xml file, find an Eclipse update site link.

What to do next

Next, share the URL for this link with others. In Eclipse, users can open the Find and Install Software wizard and type that URL to install the plug-ins and features in the asset.


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