Uninstalling and Deleting plug-ins from eclipse

Question

I am uninstalling a plugin named X from eclipse uninstall option. Now to make a clear approach I went to the eclipse plugins directory and delete the plugin jar file from there. Now I am trying to reinstall the same plug-in and eclipse prompts an error saying

An error occurred during the org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.engine.phases.CheckTrust phase. session context was:(profile=epp.package.jee, phase=org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.engine.phases.CheckTrust, operand=, action=). Error reading signed content. The file "D:\Testing\eclipse-jee-helios-SR1-win32\eclipse\plugins\x_1.1.3.jar" does not exist

Now how to resolve the above issue

Answer 1

I have similar issue. I deleted those plugins related files from eclipse/plugins and eclipse/features directory. The reason why I did that is because I have already uninstalled the plugins from eclipse but the files remain in both directories. I solved it by editing the eclipse/artifact.xml. I search all the artifacts with the id of my plugins and remove them. And I am able to reinstall the plugins again :)

Answer 2

You should never delete plugins you installed using the Eclipse installer under Help>Install New Software. Now there is directory used to drop in plugins as jars, which I am assuming you used, if so deleting it would result in the desired behavior assuming you shut down eclipse before hand. If not then you need clean your configuration area. In the future when removing go to Help>Install New Software>Already Installed software, there should be a remove once your there. :)

Goodluck.