I have been doing some investigation into using Eclipse RCP to replace some of our install/config stuff at work. RCP seems like it could be very cool and useful, the problem is that it is essentially a hack of the Eclipse platform, and while they are making some strides to make it seem less of an afterthought, they don’t seem to be there yet. It is *very* difficult and confusing and hacktacular to create an application and then attempt to build that application in a “headless” build or an automated build environment. It seems that all the Eclipse developers forget that there are times when you really don’t want a graphical tool to build your product. They have fancy wizards that make it pretty easy to export an application from the GUI, but if you wanted to set up an automated build that would extract your code and build it for the test team to use when they get in at 8am, then you have a lot of reading to do and hoops to jump though.

Lame.

If I can figure out how to do it reliably though I may be able to write a makeshift Maven2 plugin to do most of the legwork for me. Either that or it has been a long week and I’m delirious.