AspectJ Aware Headless Builds

AJDT-PDE headless build support is now available. So, it is now possible to build your bundles and plugins with PDE using the AspectJ compiler and PDE. The process is similar to standard PDE builds, with some small changes. A good description of standard headless PDE builds is available in Build and Test Automation for plug-ins and features.

Please note that as of Eclipse 3.6, AJDT will use PDE support as described in Bug 303960. This will make the need for explicit AJDT-PDE support unnecessary. The AJDT-PDE plugin will not be supported in the 3.6 stream of AJDT.

If you want to use AJDT-PDE support, you must do the following:

1. From the appropriate AJDT update site (e.g., http://download.eclipse.org/tools/ajdt/35/update/), install the AJDT Plugin Development Tools in the Optional category.
2. In your headless build script, make sure that the Eclipse antrunner points to the <Eclipse_Install>/plugins/org.eclipse.ajdt.pde.build_<qualifier>/scripts/build.xml ant script.
3. Ensure that the following property is available to ant: ajdt.pdebuild.home = <Eclipse_Install>/plugins/org.eclipse.ajdt.pde.build_<qualifier> (this could be in your build.properties, passed in as a VM argument, or set as a system variable).
4. Run your build script as you would any other headless PDE script.

For background information, see Bug 252641, which is the original bug that describes this feature.

Several things to note here:

1. This plugin is meant for headless builds only.
2. Many of the ant tasks available in standard eclipse headless builds are available here, but the names are prefixed with ajdt.. Eg- the eclipse.build task becomes ajdt.eclipse.build.
3. This plugin includes the sources, so you can browse and see how the tasks are implemented.
4. As with the org.eclipse.pde.build plugin, template scripts are included. They are largely the same, except ajdt. is used to prefix calls where appropriate.