Feature Archives
The feature packaging information is placed into a separate Java .jar.
Standard Java jar facilities are used for constructing feature archives.
Feature archives reference separately packaged plug-in archives (see next
section) and non-plug-in files.
Features are identified using a structured identifier based on the provider
internet domain name. For example, organization eclipse.org produces
feature org.eclipse.jdt. The character set used for feature identifiers
is as specified for plug-in identifiers (see
Plug-inManifest).
The recommended convention for naming the feature archives is
<id>_<version>.jar
Where <id> is the feature identifier and <version>
is the full version identifier contained in the respective feature.xml.
Note that this is a recommended convention that minimizes chance of collisions,
but is not required by the Eclipse architecture. For example, the following
are valid feature archive names
org.eclipse.jdt_2.0.0.jar
org.eclipse.pde_2.0.jar
my_feature.jar
Internally, each feature archive is packaged relative to its feature
directory (but not including the directory path element). The archive has
the following structure
feature.xml
feature<_locale>.properties (see "Translated Feature Information")
other feature files and subdirectories (TBD)
META-INF/
Java jar manifest and security files
Note that feature archives do not contain their constituent plug-ins and fragments.
