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Tycho Build Extension

The tycho-build Maven extension is a core component of Tycho that enables advanced build capabilities including pomless builds, enhanced dependency resolution, and CI-friendly versioning.

What does the tycho-build extension do?

The tycho-build extension provides the following key features:

  1. Pomless Build Support: Enables building Eclipse/OSGi projects and BND workspaces without requiring a pom.xml file in every module
  2. Enhanced Dependency Graph Building: Optimizes the Maven reactor build order based on Eclipse/OSGi dependencies
  3. CI-Friendly Versioning: Supports enhanced version properties for continuous integration workflows
  4. Smart Builder Integration: Automatically enables the Maven smart builder for parallel builds when appropriate

When should you use the tycho-build extension?

You should use the tycho-build extension when:

  • You want to use pomless builds for Eclipse plugins, features, products, or BND projects
  • You want to leverage Tycho CI-friendly versioning with dynamic qualifiers
  • You are building a project with a structured build layout and want to minimize Maven configuration

How to enable the tycho-build extension

To enable the tycho-build extension in your project:

  1. Create a .mvn folder in the root of your project (the multi-module project directory)

  2. Create a file called extensions.xml inside the .mvn folder with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<extensions>
   <extension>
      <groupId>org.eclipse.tycho</groupId>
      <artifactId>tycho-build</artifactId>
      <version>${tycho-version}</version>
   </extension>
</extensions>
  1. Create a file called maven.config in the .mvn folder to define the Tycho version:
-Dtycho-version=4.0.10

Make sure to adjust the version to match the latest Tycho release.

What happens when the extension is loaded?

When Maven starts, the tycho-build extension is loaded before the build begins. It:

  1. Registers polyglot Maven mappings that allow Tycho to read Eclipse/OSGi metadata (MANIFEST.MF, feature.xml, *.product, etc.) and BND configuration files (bnd.bnd, *.bndrun) as Maven models
  2. Provides a custom dependency graph builder that understands Eclipse/OSGi dependencies
  3. Enables advanced features like build timestamp providers and CI-friendly version properties

Related Documentation

Examples

You can find working examples of projects using the tycho-build extension in the Tycho repository:

Migration from tycho-pomless

If you are currently using the older org.eclipse.tycho.extras:tycho-pomless extension, you should migrate to org.eclipse.tycho:tycho-build. Simply update your .mvn/extensions.xml file to reference the new extension as shown above. The tycho-pomless extension is deprecated and will be removed in a future version of Tycho.