How Do You Reinstall Installed Eclipse Plugins?

Question

How do you "remove" or "copy" an eclipse plugin from one eclipse install to another? E.g. I have two installs of eclipse, one of which has a plugin installed that I don't have an installer for nor is it readily available online. Is it possible to get this plugin installed on my other version of eclipse? If so, how?

Also, does it matter if my two versions of eclipse are really different versions, i.e. one is 3.4 and the other is 3.3 or 3.2?

Answer 1

EDIT: just adding with what eclipse version i'm working: 3.5 galileo

I managed to uninstall using the "Install New Software" option (kind of bad-name to reach an uninstallation instance).

You can check this images:

Another way is:

Help->About Eclipse->Installation Details

And there select the plugin you want to uninstall.

Answer 2

As mentioned in my answer to your last question, and since (again) the chosen answer is very poor on the specifics, a plugin lives in:

• for eclipse previous to 3.4 (3.2, 3.3)

  • eclipse/plugins and eclipse/features

  • any other directory provided you define a link by creating a foo.link file inside the links directory of an eclipse installation (you might have to create the [eclipse]\links directory) containing:

    path=C:/eclipse/extensions/foobar

With references the foobar plugins, with the following subdirectories:

C:/eclipse/extensions/foobar/eclipse/plugins
C:/eclipse/extensions/foobar/eclipse/features

• for eclipse3.4 and 3.5, with p2 mechanism:
  • by putting your plugin in the dropins directory (like dropins/foobar/eclipse/plugins and dropins/foobar/eclipse/features, or foobar.zip, with the zip containing eclipse/plugins and eclipse/features)

So you should look for a plugin in those directories, and copy them into into the appropriate plugin directory for completing the installation.

Answer 3

You could copy the relevant folders and jars from the source installation's plugins/ and features/ folders to the target install and then restart the target Eclipse with the -clean parameter.

Answer 4

For more recent versions of Eclipse, there is a much more simple solution: File -> Import -> Install -> From existing installation. Select your features from that second installation and you are done.

Answer 5

Yes, you can do this easily by copying the corresponding directory (or jar) from the source eclipse install plugins/ or/and features/ directory to the target eclipse install plugin/ or/and features/ directory.

Depending on the Plugin you may encounter compatibility issues when source and target versions differ. Some Plugins work with a braod line of eclipse versions, some require a distinct version.

Also, a general hint: Don't be vague, be more specific. Sometimes there are known issues with setups, versions and the like. Being specific can potentially help identify a complex problem.

Answer 6

If the plugin has an update site you can copy its url to the new install and run update.