While installing plugin in Eclipse Luna, "Unable to acquire PluginConverter service" and "No repository found" errors appear in logs

Question

I am using Luna version of Eclipse EE eclipse-jee-luna-M1-win32-x86_64 and trying to place the tomcat plugin (EclipseTotale - com.sysdeo.eclipse.tomcat_3.3.0) inside the dropins folder. When the tomcat icons didn't show up, I checked the eclipse logs, and it showed :

!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.publisher.eclipse 4 0 2013-09-12 20:19:53.571
!MESSAGE Unable to acquire PluginConverter service during generation for: C:\Programs\eclipse-jee-luna-M1-win32-x86_64\eclipse\dropins\com.sysdeo.eclipse.tomcat_3.3.0.

!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.core 4 0 2013-09-12 20:19:53.581
!MESSAGE Provisioning exception
!STACK 1
org.eclipse.equinox.p2.core.ProvisionException: No repository found at file:/C:/Programs/eclipse-jee-luna-M1-win32-x86_64/eclipse/dropins/com.sysdeo.eclipse.tomcat_3.3.0/.
    at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.repository.helpers.AbstractRepositoryManager.fail(AbstractRepositoryManager.java:395)
    at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.repository.helpers.AbstractRepositoryManager.loadRepository(AbstractRepositoryManager.java:692)

The same plugin used to work perfectly for Juno (and Kepler). Any ideas ?

Answer 1

In case anyone else (like me) is trying to install a plugin that is unlikely to get updated for a while...

You can add the legacy "Eclipse 2.0" plugin support from the "Eclipse Tests, Examples, and Extras" category in the Luna updates repository. See the attachment to this comment, which you can eventually find by tracing the breadcrumbs from the link in Dan Dar3's answer.

You can also add the legacy plugin support like so from the command line:

./eclipse -nosplash -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director \
    -repository http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/4.4/ \
    -installIU org.eclipse.osgi.compatibility.plugins.feature.feature.group

After that, older plugins should install successfully.

Answer 2

I think the cause is to be found in this Eclipse 4.4 Luna change, which went into M1. https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=407312

For Luna we are considering removing the plugin converter support that allowed Eclipse 2.0 old-style plugins to run unchanged. There types of plugins have no OSGi bundle manifest (only a plugin/fragment xml file).

Have contacted Sysdeo and Bruno Leroux was kind to provide an updated package which seems to work fine with Eclipse 4.4 RC3 (plugin v3.3.1) although he had no plans to support development for the plugin any further (12 years old). He's also waiting for feedback from other two other users and then he'll make the updated publicly available.

~~~

Version 3.3.1 of the plugin to support Eclipse 4.4 Luna is now publicly available. http://www.eclipsetotale.com/tomcatPlugin.html

Answer 3

For anyone trying to fix this problem. I used the eclipse plugin converter on this plugin which creates a META-INF/MANIFEST.MF file from the old plugin.xml file. This makes the above error disappear, however the plugin still does not work, but now there is no error message in the eclipse logs... I know nothing about plugin development so if anyone has any ideas let me know.