How to patch an eclipse plugin?

Question

I'd like to fix a bug in an eclipse plugin (an official plugin of the WTP). I locally changed the source code, debugged it - everything is fine.

Now I'd like to propagate this change to my eclipse installation, but I am facing problems. There seems to be more than one way to achieve this, e.g.:

This site recommended fragments, but the Eclipse FAQ disadvises that.

But I am stuck and no way seems to work for me.

UPDATE:

I tried to create and install a feature patch, as suggested. After this installation the feature patch is installed, but not the containing patched plugin. The previous/existing version of the plugin is still present and active.

I'd like to know why this is the case? Does this something have to do with signing of the official plugins? Is there a log to see why the patched plugin has not been installed?

FINAL UPDATE:

The problem was that I patched a parent feature (which has been shown in the eclipse installation details), not the direct feature which directly contained the plugin. After specifying the correct/"lowest-level" feature for patching, everything worked as expected.

Answer 1

The best approach is to create what's known as a "feature patch". A feature patch consists of the entire new version of the plugin you are patching along with a feature that describes what's being patched. See this useful blog post:

http://aniefer.blogspot.com/2009/06/patching-features-with-p2.html