exporting installed plugins from eclipse to another

Question

How to export installed plugins from eclipse?

I want to use some of my installed plugins in another eclipse machine.

I don\'t want to download those again.

Answer 1

I’m bringing a really old thread to life here, but there’s a much more comfortable way to export your Eclipse plug-ins and use your setup on another machine now.

On http://profiles.yatta.de you can download the Yatta Launcher for Eclipse, which allows you to export your Eclipse & workspace setup (including your plug-in setup).

Export and installation are pretty straight forward:

1. Download the Launcher from http://profiles.yatta.de and start it
2. The tool will automatically discover your Eclipse installations. Find the one you want to export in the list (they are all named after your workspaces).
3. Click the Upload & Share button (the blue one) on the right of the entry you want to export.

(You won’t actually “share” your Eclipse or workspace with anyone. You’ll just upload a setup file with your metadata that only you have access to yourself. You could share this later, but you can also just keep it as a backup).

This solution does not only allow you to reuse your eclipse plug-in setup, but also your configured Git & task repositories and many other setup-specific settings.

Answer 2

Start fresh and install plugins from an old install

The idea here is that you want to keep your old install intact, download a new indigo package (http://download.eclipse.org/) and just adds the existing plugins to your install. With Indigo this is now made super easy!

Step 1: Download and unzip your Indigo install: http://download.eclipse.org

Step 2: Import your plug-ins from your previous install by doing File > Import > Install > From existing install, pick your old install, select the plug-ins and there you go! You can chose to go piece meal, or chose to pick several entries, in any event dependency analysis will be performed to check the validity of the install.

Step 3: Click next a couple times and patiently wait for the bytes to download to your machine. Then restart and enjoy!

from http://lenettoyeur-on-eclipse.blogspot.com/2011/06/from-helios-to-indigo-is-easy.html

Answer 3

You can simply copy the plug in folder from the other machine --(may be on a pendrive or cd )-- whatever suits you.

Then go to your ecplise, File > Import... > Plug-in Development --> Plug-ins and Fragments Click "Next"

[Import From] -- Directory. Browse your plugins folder Just Hit "Next"

From the left box, select individual or you may want to add all of it. Just hit "AddAll ->" And Just Hit "Next"

and there on just sit back let it do all the import work.

Answer 4

I don't know how to export a installed plugin,
but this answer helps for reinstalling an eclipse plugin from another eclipse installation. (How Do You Reinstall Installed Eclipse Plugins?)

Also See
Installing Eclipse (3.4+) plugins in a directory other than ECLIPSE_HOME/plugins
How To Add Perspectives In Eclipse?

Answer 5

Dropping the right jars from your plugins directory to the target installation plugins directory should do the trick.

Answer 6

It seems that feature is on its way: http://bugs.eclipse.org/282419