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

Answer 1

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 2

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 3

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 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

>>How Do You Reinstall Installed Eclipse Plugins?

You don't.

There is no Reinstall Plugin option in Eclipse.

You can, however, uninstall the plugin (***) and reinstall it using MENU >> Help | Install new Software

(***) Follow Sebastian's uninstall instructions, which still work in the latest Mars version of Eclipse.

Answer 6

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.