Resolving The Problem

WebSphere Integration Developer V6.0 is based on Eclipse 3.x which caches all plugin.xml files into a single repository for quicker loading. If you used WebSphere Integration Developer before installing a new plugin, you should start WebSphere Integration Developer once with the "-clean" option.

This "-clean" forces WebSphere Integration Developer to rebuild that repository. This applies to anything that is installed into Eclipse by unzipping it into its plugins folder.

Internal Details

Configuration information that is affected by using "-clean" is stored in a directory called "configuration". This directory is located in {WIDInstallDir}\eclipse\configuration. Any information present in that directory is applicable to the entire WebSphere Integration Developer install and not just a particular workspace. Changes made here will affect all workspaces associated with this particular WebSphere Integration Developer install.

In WebSphere Integration Developer there are three main items that are present in the configuration: OSGi, Runtime and Update. We will use the name "Configurator" to represent the Eclipse Updater so as not to confuse it with the Rational Product Updater (RPU).

OSGi
OSGi has three main parts:

• State: this is information regarding the various dependencies between the plug-ins available.
  
• Cache: the binaries of manifest files (bundle data). Manifests are like plugin.xml files. There is one manifest file for each plugin. Manifest files are created during the installation of WebSphere Integration Developer. They contain information that was once part of plugin.xml files in WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition but has been moved to manifest files in WebSphere Integration Developer. OSGi only handles information contained in manifest (.MF) files.
  
• JXE: this is a binary file containing a memory dump of classes loaded from a jar file. This allows for quick access to the classes. These can be quickly loaded into memory.

Runtime

• Runtime is what was referred to as the "plugin registry" in WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition. Cached information about plugin extensions and extension points is saved here.

Configurator

• This is what installs the various bundles into OSGi. The platform.xml file contains a listing of bundles that should be loaded into OSGi.

Note: the terms bundle and plugin are synonymous, the former is used when talking about OSGi.

What does "-clean" do?

• Manifest files are removed and regenerated.
  
• Cached binaries of manifest files are removed and regenerated from the newly created manifest files.
  
• JXE information is removed and regenerated.
  
• Runtime plugin registry is removed and regenerated.

Beyond this it is up to each plugin that is listed in the configuration directory to handle what it does when "-clean" is used

Practical Use

It is a good practice to start up WebSphere Integration Developer using the "-clean" option after applying any Interim Fixes. This will insure that the plugin registry is regenerated to reflect any changes from the applied fixes. This only needs to be done once after applying any Interim Fix(s), as running with "-clean" takes considerable time in regenerating the plugin registry.