Eclipse update fails with "There were no installable units selected when the plan was computed."

Question

I had Eclipse installed on my old laptop. I was getting a new laptop, and I copied the eclipse tree and my workspace to the new laptop. Most everything appears to work on the new laptop, but I noticed today when I saw a plugin update come through. I tried updating on both the old and new laptops. The update on the old laptop went through fine, but the update attempt on the new laptop fails with "There were no installable units selected when the plan was computed."

This is the log file excerpt corresponding to the attempt:

!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.operations 4 0 2012-02-03 16:34:51.791 !MESSAGE Operation details !SUBENTRY 1 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 1 2012-02-03 16:34:51.791 !MESSAGE Cannot complete the install because one or more required items could not be found. !SUBENTRY 2 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 0 2012-02-03 16:34:51.791 !MESSAGE Software currently installed: Shared profile 1.0.0.1328029049876 (SharedProfile_com.springsource.sts.ide 1.0.0.1328029049876) !SUBENTRY 2 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 0 2012-02-03 16:34:51.791 !MESSAGE Missing requirement: Shared profile 1.0.0.1328029049876 (SharedProfile_com.springsource.sts.ide 1.0.0.1328029049876) requires 'org.maven.ide.eclipse [1.1.0.20120130-2016]' but it could not be found

!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.operations 4 0 2012-02-03 16:34:52.325 !MESSAGE Operation details !SUBENTRY 1 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 1 2012-02-03 16:34:52.325 !MESSAGE Cannot complete the install because one or more required items could not be found. !SUBENTRY 2 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 0 2012-02-03 16:34:52.325 !MESSAGE Software currently installed: Shared profile 1.0.0.1328029049876 (SharedProfile_com.springsource.sts.ide 1.0.0.1328029049876) !SUBENTRY 2 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 0 2012-02-03 16:34:52.325 !MESSAGE Missing requirement: Shared profile 1.0.0.1328029049876 (SharedProfile_com.springsource.sts.ide 1.0.0.1328029049876) requires 'org.maven.ide.eclipse [1.1.0.20120130-2016]' but it could not be found

!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.operations 4 0 2012-02-03 16:34:52.362 !MESSAGE Operation details !SUBENTRY 1 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 1 2012-02-03 16:34:52.362 !MESSAGE Cannot complete the install because one or more required items could not be found. !SUBENTRY 2 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 0 2012-02-03 16:34:52.362 !MESSAGE Software currently installed: Shared profile 1.0.0.1328029049876 (SharedProfile_com.springsource.sts.ide 1.0.0.1328029049876) !SUBENTRY 2 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 0 2012-02-03 16:34:52.362 !MESSAGE Missing requirement: Shared profile 1.0.0.1328029049876 (SharedProfile_com.springsource.sts.ide 1.0.0.1328029049876) requires 'org.maven.ide.eclipse [1.1.0.20120130-2016]' but it could not be found

!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.ui 4 0 2012-02-03 16:34:52.438 !MESSAGE There were no installable units selected when the plan was computed.

!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.ui 4 0 2012-02-03 16:34:52.440 !MESSAGE There were no installable units selected when the plan was computed.

!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.ui 4 0 2012-02-03 16:34:52.440 !MESSAGE There were no installable units selected when the plan was computed.

Answer 1

I resolved this. This was a "Windows Seven/Program Files" issue. You can't install STS or Eclipse into "Program Files" because it needs to write into the application directory, and it's not normally run with admin rights.

I wish this didn't result in such an obtuse symptom. You'd think it would have at least reported something like "couldn't write to application directory".

Answer 2

I ran into the same problem, and solved this by running eclipse.exe "as administrator" to perform the update: