Deploying the information center as a Web Archive

Deploying the Information Center as a Web Archive

Using Eclipse 3.4 or later it is possible to configure the help plugins to be deployed as a web archive (war file) which will act as a fully functioning information center. The instructions below assume a Tomcat server has been installed, but with minor modifications these steps should work for any full featured server.

Clone the eclipse.platform.ua repository

git clone https://git.eclipse.org/r/platform/eclipse.platform.ua.git

In the Git repository locate the infocenter-web directory and underneath that there will be two directories titled infocenter-app and infocenter-product.
Make sure you have the "m2e - Maven Integration for Eclipse" feature installed in your Eclipse IDE.
Import the infocenter-web Maven project using File->Import->Existing Project.
Add some documentation plugins to the infocenter-web/infocenter-app/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/plugins directory.
Register the plugins in infocenter-web/infocenter-app/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/configuration/org.eclipse.equinox.simpleconfigurator/bundles.info

Install required Maven POMs from Eclipse Platform:

git clone -q --depth 1 https://git.eclipse.org/r/platform/eclipse.platform.releng.aggregator && mvn install -N -f eclipse.platform.releng.aggregator/eclipse-platform-parent && mvn install -N -f eclipse.platform.releng.aggregator/eclipse.platform.releng.prereqs.sdk

Execute a Maven build in infocenter-web
- Either within Eclipse, right-click on infocenter-build.launch and select Run As -> infocenter-build
- Or from command-line using the command mvnw
For Tomcat only. In conf/server.xml add URIEncoding="UTF-8" to the connector element, for example
```
<Connector port="8080" URIEncoding="UTF-8" etc.>
```
If this step is not performed search will fail if the search term contains non ASCII characters.
Start Tomcat and see the help system start up. The default URL is http://localhost:8080/help/.

Notes: If you look in the config.ini the help.war file under directory help/WEB_INF/configuration you will notice the line eclipse.product=org.eclipse.productname. If your product has help system customizations in a product plugin you can activate these by changing this line to point to your product plugin.

Troubleshooting

HTTP 404 With Message "BridgeServlet: /help/"

In the web.xml activate the init parameter enableFrameworkControls. This enables endpoints to control the embedded OSGi container. Call http://localhost:8080/help/sp_test.

You should see the message "Servlet delegate registered - org.eclipse.equinox.http.servlet.HttpServiceServlet". You may instead see the message "Servlet delegate not registered.". This indicates that bundle activator from bundle org.eclipse.equinox.http.servletbridge was not started or that it accesses a different instance of class org.eclipse.equinox.servletbridge.BridgeServlet.

For all available framework control endpoints refer to org.eclipse.equinox.servletbridge.BridgeServlet.serviceFrameworkControls(HttpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse).