Deploying the information center as a Web Archive

Using Eclipse 3.4 or later it is possible to configure the help plugins to be deployed as a web archive (war file) which will act as a fully functioning information center. The instructions below assume a Tomcat server has been installed, but with minor modifications these steps should work for any full featured server.

Notes: If you look in the config.ini the help.war file under directory help/WEB_INF/configuration you will notice the line eclipse.product=org.eclipse.productname. If your product has help system customizations in a product plugin you can activate these by changing this line to point to your product plugin.

Troubleshooting

HTTP 404 with Message "BridgeServlet: /help/"

In the web.xml activate the init parameter enableFrameworkControls. This enables endpoints to control the embedded OSGi container. Call http://localhost:8080/help/sp_test.

You should see the message "Servlet delegate registered - org.eclipse.equinox.http.servlet.HttpServiceServlet". You may instead see the message "Servlet delegate not registered.". This indicates that bundle activator from bundle org.eclipse.equinox.http.servletbridge was not started or that it accesses a different instance of class org.eclipse.equinox.servletbridge.BridgeServlet.

For all available framework control endpoints refer to org.eclipse.equinox.servletbridge.BridgeServlet.serviceFrameworkControls(HttpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse).