I like Eclipse product configurations. Did I say that before? I use them a lot. They are a great way to assemble your final bits. PDE Build, Buckminster and soon Tycho are able to take them and put the stuff together. You’ll get a final zip that’s ready to hand out to consumers.

There is also a way to launch them. However, what always bothered me was that this was just a fake application launch. You had to use the product editor all the time to keep the launch configs in sync. But over time I noticed some issues. Sometimes, when updating target platforms, something gets out of sync, features will be missing, whatever. Your launch is broken and the guys start to line up next to my desk.

Hmm, wouldn’t it be nice to just launch products all the time and have them 100% like they should be all the time including automatic validation of missing features (even included once) and plug-ins?

Oh yes! If you need this, just install my Patches for PDE (via Help -> Install New Software…). I published a new version in my repository (http://eclipseguru.org/). The relevant patch is attached to bug 326059.