[fedora-java] Automating pre-build/checkout steps for eclipse features/plugins?

[Robin Green]

While hacking on the eclipse-pydev rpm, and looking at packaging
eclipse-emf and eclipse-ve for fedora, I've noticed that the procedure you
have to follow to check out source code from CVS before you can even build
a new version of a package, isn't obvious. (In fact, it doesn't seem to be
really documented at all for some as-yet-unpackaged-by-fedora
features, like eclipse-emf. run.sh? build.sh? start.sh? Which one should I
use?)

Take eclipse-pydev for example. In eclipse-pydev.spec we have just one
source tarball:

Source0: eclipse-pydev-fetched-HEAD-0.9.3.tar.gz

However, not only is there no _formal_ description of where this came from
(because there is no standard way of representing CVS branches and
directories as URLs, and eclipse.org doesn't provide checked-out
tarballs), this isn't even one single CVS checkout. It's actually (so
far as I can make out) a combination of four CVS checkouts -
org.python.pydev.releng, and then checked out within that,
org.python.pydev, org.python.pydev.debug, and org.python.pydev.help.

What I'd like to see eventually is a systematic way of scripting or
describing the checkout of new versions, maybe in a new %fetch section in
.spec files - so that no human intelligence, and definitely no mystic
undocumented incantations (like on this page:
http://download.eclipse.org/tools/emf/downloads/drops/2.1.0/I200506091102/buildlog.txt
) are required. It goes against the spirit of open source to have mystic
undocumented incantations required to merely check out the source code in
the correct structure required - or to do any "preBuild" steps:
unfortunately, the eclipse.pde build system, which is used by a number of
eclipse features, permits a "preBuild" step which occurs even *before* CVS
checkout - which cannot in general be ran in a .spec file because checkout
has already occurred by that point. (I don't think running anything before
CVS checkout is a good idea, and I can't see why that would be necessary.)

It may well be the case that the procedure for checking out most eclipse
features from CVS in the right structure is in fact extremely simple.
However, simple it may be, but it doesn't appear to be documented 
anywhere.

Any suggestions?
-- 
Robin