After you add a custom rule plug-in to
a feature, you can add the feature to an update site.
About this task
Adding a feature to an update site is called publishing the
feature on the site.
Publishing a feature on a site
Procedure
Open the Plug-in Development perspective.
On the main menu click File > New > Project > Plug-in
Development > Update Site Project. The New Update Site wizard
opens.
On Update Site Project page, enter
a project name in the Project name field and
then click Finish. The wizard
does the following actions:
It creates the update site project and displays it in the Package
Explorer. The project contains one item, a site.xml file.
It opens the site.xml file in the site manifest
editor.
In the site manifest editor, click the Site
Map tab.
Click Add Feature. The Feature
Selection window opens.
In the list of features, click the feature that you want
to add and then click OK.The site manifest editor adds an entry for the feature
to the list of features on the left side of the Site Map tab
under Managing the Site. Before the feature
is built, the list entry for the feature consists of the feature ID
followed by the version number of the feature in parentheses, for
example: FP_0003_FeatureID (1.0.0.qualifier).
To build the feature, on the Site Map tab,
select the feature that was added and click Build. The site manifest editor creates the files that are required
to install the update site into the Rational® Developer for System z® environment. The site manifest editor does
the following actions:
It creates a JAR file that contains the feature information and
adds it to the Features folder of the update
site project in the Project Explorer. The name of the JAR file consists
of the feature ID, the underscore character, the feature version,
and the date and time of the build, including minutes and seconds.
For example, FP_0003_FeatureID_1.0.0.201205220911.
It creates a JAR file for each plug-in that the feature contains
and adds the new JAR file to the Plugins folder
of the update site project in the Project Explorer. The name of this
JAR file consists of the project ID, the underscore character, and
the project version, and the date and time of the build. For example, PIP_0001_ProjectID_1.0.0.201205220912.
It replaces the list entry for the feature in the list of features
on the Site Map tab with the name of the new
feature JAR file.
Close the site manifest editor.
Updating a feature in an update site
About this task
When you update a feature and want to publish the updated
version, you have two options:
You can add the updated version to the update site. Update sites
can contain multiple versions of the same feature, even if the content
and the version numbers of the features are identical. This addition
is possible because the site manifest editor includes the current
date and time in the name of each feature JAR file, making each name
unique.
You can delete the old version from the update site and then add
the new version.
Procedure
To add an updated version of a feature to an update site:
Optional: Before you add the updated version
of the feature to the update site, you can modify the version number
of the feature to more easily distinguish this version of the feature
from previous versions.