## Exporting a Feature

First you have to set up the build configuration. The build configuration includes information about the files and directories that should be included in the feature for each individual plug-in and fragment. There may be some design-time files and directories that should not be shipped. See Build Configuration for details.

Then you can use PDE's Export Deployable Features wizard to build and export the feature. This way you are shielded from Ant scripts and your workspace is never polluted with build by-products.

Select File > Export... > Deployable Features.

Select the feature(s) you want to export.

A feature can be exported to an archive or a directory.

To publish a feature to an update site, the feature and its includes plug-ins must be packaged as individual JAR archives.

Press Next.

You have the option to sign the JARs for added security. You also have the option to generate JNLP manifests for Java Web Start deployment.

The wizard will build all the features selected and their included plug-ins and fragments. Features go into a features/ subdirectory and plug-ins go into a plugins/ subdirectory.

The alternative would be to build features manually:

1. Right-click on the feature.xml file for your feature project and choose 'Create Ant Build File'. This will generate a build.xml file.
2. Select the build.xml file and choose 'Run Ant...'
3. In the Ant build script wizard, select the target(s) you want to run. See Generating Ant Scripts for details.