Hey Alex... just saw this thread.. I'm going to link to it from the JBossIDE dev mailing list =)

It would be nice to have an installer because we have _a lot_ of configurations for different downloads that are getting very confusing. Here's what I'm thinking (and maybe this is a little too grand):

1) Our installer should optionally download & install the "correct" version of Eclipse for JBossIDE if the user needs/wants it.
2) If they want to install into an existing Eclipse we should do rudimentary version verification to make sure we know we are installing into a "good" version (this should only require an eclipse home directory)
3) Along with each seperate component of JBossIDE, The user will have the chance to also install the various JBossIDE dependencies, i.e. webtools, GEF, EMF, etc... (also could be optional downloads to keep the installer as compact as possible)

so we will basically be replicating what the update manager does and have yet-another way of installing ? doesn't sound very relevant does it ?

I could though see a point in making the full super bundle (with the ide etc.) into an installer (assuming it won't increase the size extremely).

And if we are going to do an installer that can put into an existing eclipse it should at least have the option (maybe the default ?) to put it in an external non-root-eclipse directory (just like update manager allows) - this will allow users to have more updatable/modular eclipse installations and eg. it is supertrivial to uninstall/reinstall (simply delete/recopy the jbosside directory)