[orca-list] Eclipse Installer

[Jann Schneider <jann schneider googlemail com>]

Hello,

just want to let you know some things i learned about the eclipse
installer (aka. oomph installer). Previously i just used to download
an ready to use eclipse package, unzipped it and made adjustments as
required. But as you might know, there is a new, interactive installer
for installing and managing installed eclipse packages and the bundle
pool etc.. Thats a little package (45 MB or so) you can download from
eclipse.org that lets you choose the package and other things you want
to install or perform during the installation process. As i'm
interessted on the whole oomph stuff because i'll need that at work, i
wanted to try this installer now. Unfortunately it was nearly
completely inaccessible when launched as is ...

Well, i downloaded the tar.gz file, extracted the archive and tried to
run the provided eclipse-inst executable from the CLI. All i got was
the title and a list of packages. This list was not very accessible,
too. I could only find it in flat review mode and wasn't able to
navigate to it or select any package in it.

After some research i found out that they provide a VM parameter to
switch the installer to the "advanced" mode. Well, there is a button
in the gui as well but i wasn't able to get to it using orca. To
switch the mode you'd have to tweak the eclipse-inst.ini file: Add the
following line to the very end of the file, save it and launch the
installer afterwards.

-Doomph.setup.installer.mode=advanced

Now the installation wizard is a lot more accessible. I was able to
select a package, the eclipse version (like neon or oxygen), find all
the buttons (like next, back etc.) and go through the wizard.

One more remark that might be of interesst: in the last page you will
get a couple of options like "launch automatically" etc. I think there
is some kind of progress bar too, but i couldn't read it... However,
there is a  text widget displaying all the log output. I just used
that widget to track the progress.

Another important thing to know is the license agreement dialog: At a
particular  point of the installation you will be prompted to agree to
the license. On my box i had to use Alt + F6 to get to the sub-window
in order to accept this license.

Hope this helps some of you :-)

Regards Jann