How to create an eclipse update archive from an online update site?

Question

I'm getting tired of having to install hundreds of plugins(I use a lot of em) from the web everytime I change my eclipse installation.

What eclipse does during a plugin install is download the relevant jars from the update site and install them.

Is there any way to bundle up these download jars into an archive so that the next time one can update locally without having to download all the plugins again?

Answer 1

I'd like to add to Paul's answer the following Ant script in which you don't have to list all the IDs of the features contained in the site:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<project name="MyProject" default="CreateLocalRepo" basedir=".">
  <target name="CreateLocalRepo">
    <p2.mirror destination="file://..." ignoreerrors="true">   
      <source>
        <repository location="http://.../" />
      </source>
    </p2.mirror>
  </target>
</project>