Multiple product install with shared configuration

Question

Maybe what we try to achieve is simply not possible. I can get it to work if I make manual modifications but I fear that the resulting setup will fail after an update to the p2 profile (update of a IU or new IU..)
The setup we want to achieve is as following:
--Installation folder, can be written to by administrator (on windows this could be program files for instance), he has p2 tooling that he can use to make modifications to the setup, these tooling will request elevation so it all plays nice.
--Executable come in root
/InstallFolder/Application1.exe
/InstallFolder/Application1.ini
/InstallFolder/Application2.exe
/InstallFolder/Application2.ini
--Configuration folders to which osgi.shared.configuration.area should point in the ini
/InstallFolder/configuration/application1/config.ini
/InstallFolder/configuration/application2/config.ini
--Shared P2 agent with bundle pooling
/InstallFolder/p2/org.eclipse.equinox.p2.engine/profileRegistry/application1.profile
/InstallFolder/p2/org.eclipse.equinox.p2.engine/profileRegistry/application2.profile
--Bundle Poll
/InstallFolder/artifacts/plugins
/InstallFolder/artifacts/features
The osgi.configuration.area should point to a folder under user.home which we assume is always writable.
The problem is that if we try to enforce this setup by setting the custom configuration folder in the p2 profile (org.eclipse.equinox.p2.configurationFolder) it will always write this folder in the ini file as -configuration {folder}. As a result the launcher ignores osgi.configuration.area in the config.ini or launcher.ini which points to the userhome.
I cannot fill in the user.home in the p2 profile because than other users will not have a working setup. Am I missing something here?
I could manually remove the -configuration after our installer and then the application will work but since the equinox manipulator always seems to load and write this -configuration {folder} if it is not 'configuration' I fear that this will break the setup after one touches the profile to install extra IU's which most of our customers do.
Our current work around is to have each executable in a folder and then the default 'configuration' folder can be used. This feels more like a hack but it works because the -configuration is not written in this case because is it 'configuration'.

Answer 1

schneida wrote:Are there easier mehtods to have a ArchLinux install with local packages?
Personally I use a squid cache proxy to keep a copy of the packages that will be used across the various computers.
The interesting sections of my /etc/squid/squid.conf file are;
maximum_object_size 500 MB
refresh_pattern abs.tar.gz$ 0 20% 4320 refresh-ims
refresh_pattern db.tar.gz$ 0 20% 4320 refresh-ims
refresh_pattern files.tar.gz$ 0 20% 4320 refresh-ims
refresh_pattern pkg.tar.gz$ 10080 90% 43200 override-expire ignore-no-cache ignore-no-store
The patterns will
* Cache all pacman packages for at least a week.
* Check the server if the database has been modified since it was last accessed.