Easiest way to upgrade eclipse 3.7 to 4.2 (Juno)

Question

So since Eclipse juno is based on 4.2 instead of 3.7, what is the easiest way to upgrade to it, short of installing a separate copy of juno and re-installing all my existing plugins from 3.7 into it?

There doesnt seem to be a straightforward upgrade path mentioned on eclipse.org.

Answer 1

Eclipse can barely update from 3.7.1 to 3.7.2, never mind from 3.7 to 4.2.

You're taking the life of your development environment in your hands if you try to make that much of an upgrade to an existing Eclipse development environment. I don't know about you, but my development environment is too important to risk upgrading.

Always create a new Eclipse directory and new Eclipse workspaces when you want to change your development environment.

Unzip Eclipse 4.2 to a new directory, and add your plug-ins one at a time. You can use Bananeweizen's method to copy the Eclipse 3.7 plug-ins, or you can add them manually. It's probably a good idea to see if the plug-ins you use have been upgraded for Eclipse 4.2.

Create a new Eclipse 4.2 workspace, and copy your project code from your Eclipse 3.7 workspace. If you discover a problem later, you can fall back to Eclipse 3.7 and your Eclipse 3.7 workspaces.

When you have an Eclipse 4.2 environment that works, zip it back up and keep the zip file so you can restore your Eclipse 4.2 environment in the event your Eclipse gets corrupted.

Never ever think of changing your working environment.

Answer 2

Download the platform runtime binary from http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops4/R-4.2-201206081400/. That is basically an "Eclipse without plugins". Run it (on a fresh workspace), select File -> Import -> Installation -> From existing Installation and point the wizard to your existing 3.7 directory. Check "Install latest versions", hit finish.

That will install the latest versions of the plugins found in your 3.7 installation into your 4.2 installation. Sadly most people don't know this feature and install each plugin manually when upgrading.

Bonus anwser: With the same wizard you can also export the list of installed features into a file that you can share with colleagues, so you have all installed the same plugins.