Easy Way of Installing Eclipse Plugins on Ubuntu

Easy way of installing Eclipse plugins on Ubuntu

With Eclipse Galileo (3.5) or Helios (3.6), I would rather recommend an external directory called 'mydropins' (for instance), which you can reference from your eclipse.ini, with the option:

-Dorg.eclipse.equinox.p2.reconciler.dropins.directory=C:/Prog/Java/eclipse_addons

This is called a shared dropins folder.

See in this SO answer an example of plugin deployment in this shared dropins folder.

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(Your link refers to the previous provisioning mechanism, pre-p2.

P2 is the new provisioning system introduced late in Eclipse3.4, refined (debugged?) in eclipse 3.5 and 3.6.

See the supported dropins formats to check how you can organize your own personal dropins folder (that you can reuse between several eclipse installations)

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You said you are using:

-Dorg.eclipse.equinox.p2.reconciler.dropins.directory=/home/taher/opt/eclipse/Third-party-eclipse-links

That means, under /home/taher/opt/eclipse/Third-party-eclipse-links, you:

• won't have any .link file
• will copy:

    eclipse-cpp-helios-linux-gtk
      eclipse
        features
        plugins

Note: the structure within eclipse-cpp-helios-linux-gtk should be the one describe above, for p2 to pick it up.

How to install list of eclipse plugins from a script?

Here are the command line snippets to install some of my favorite plugins (tested on Eclipse Indigo 3.7)... The trick is to figure out the value of the "installIU" parameter for the package... The Eclipse GUI will show this if you click on "more" link when the desired package is selected in the installer window.

cmakeed - CMake editor

eclipse -nosplash -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director -repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo/,http://cmakeed.sourceforge.net/eclipse/ -installIU com.cthing.cmakeed.feature.feature.group

OpenInTerminal - Add option in context menu

eclipse -nosplash -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director -repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo/,http://eclipse-openinterminal.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/site/ -installIU OpenInTerminal.feature.group

protobuf-dt - Google Protobuffer editor

eclipse -nosplash -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director -repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo/,http://download.eclipse.org/modeling/tmf/xtext/updates/composite/releases/,http://protobuf-dt.googlecode.com/git/update-site -installIU com.google.eclipse.protobuf.feature.group

yedit - YAML Editor

eclipse -nosplash -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director -repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo/,http://dadacoalition.org/yedit -installIU org.dadacoalition.yedit.feature.group

shelled - Bash Script Editor

eclipse -nosplash -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director -repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo/,http://download.eclipse.org/technology/dltk/updates/,https://sourceforge.net/projects/shelled/files/shelled/update/ -installIU net.sourceforge.shelled.feature.group

Web Page Editor

eclipse -nosplash -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director -repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo/ -installIU org.eclipse.jst.webpageeditor.feature.feature.group

Pydev
Pydev is tricky because it requires installing a certificate first... Here's a script that automates that step:

#!/usr/bin/python
# Add PyDev's certificate to Java's key and certificate database
# Certificate file here: http://pydev.org/pydev_certificate.cer
import os, sys, pexpect, urllib2
def main():
  # NOTE: You may have to update the path to your system's cacerts file
  certs_file = '/usr/lib/jvm/default-java/jre/lib/security/cacerts'  
  pydev_certs_url = 'http://pydev.org/pydev_certificate.cer'
  print "Adding pydev_certificate.cer to %s" % (certs_file)
  pydev_cert = open('pydev_certificate.cer', 'w')
  pydev_cert.write(urllib2.urlopen(pydev_certs_url).read())
  pydev_cert.close()
  cmd = "keytool -import -file ./pydev_certificate.cer -keystore %s" % (certs_file)
  child = pexpect.spawn(cmd)
  child.expect("Enter keystore password:")
  child.sendline("changeit")
  if child.expect(["Trust this certificate?", "already exists"]) == 0:
    child.sendline("yes")
  try:
    child.interact()
  except OSError:
    pass  
  print "done"

if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

Then you can run:

eclipse -nosplash -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director -repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo/,http://pydev.org/updates/ -installIU org.python.pydev.feature.feature.group

Eclipse: How to install a plugin manually?

You can try this

click Help>Install New Software on the menu bar

How do you manually install the eclipse-CDT plugin from an archive/zip on ubuntu?

On eclipse 3.5, instead of unzipping onto the eclipse folder, try "Help" -> "Install New Software..." then "Add" and instead of typing an update site, choose "Archive". Then follow the instructions.

Easy way to copy old plugins into new install of eclipse

If your old version is at least 3.7, then you can do this:

• Use File -> Export -> Install -> Installed software items to file in your old installation to create a file containing the currently installed features.
• Use File -> Import -> Install -> Software items from file in your new installation. Point it to the file from above and make sure to check "Install latest versions".

How to install plugin for Eclipse from .zip

It depends on what the zip contains. Take a look to see if it got content.jar and artifacts.jar. If it does, it is an archived updated site. Install from it the same way as you install from a remote site.

If the zip doesn't contain content.jar and artifacts.jar, go to your Eclipse install's dropins directory, create a subfolder (name doesn't matter) and expand your zip into that folder. Restart Eclipse.

Eclipse won't show plugins after installation

First about your plugins.

When you say you "see" the plugins it looks like you see the physical folders and jars. The best way is actually to use the dialogue box : help => about eclipse => installation details

There are a number of informative tabs that tell you what your configuration is actually made of. Including the last tab showing the log of the eclipse initialisation.

Then you can also see the log using its dedicated view : window => show view => error log.

Overall the problem as you describe it seems to have to do with permissions. Either in eclipse itself or your workspace or java itself. I'd check that first !

Now about the remote reason for your predicaments.

You seem to have installed eclipse through apt. This is not necessary.

1. apt versions are always late over stable eclipse releases.
2. You don't master plugins when an upgrade is inflicted on you.

The reason why Debian folks use apt is because it takes care of all dependencies. However, eclipse comes with very little external dependencies: the JRE and that's all and a lot of internal dependencies. This is why you now have pre-packaged eclipse bundles.

In addition, using apt may force an unwanted eclipse update on your installation when you less need it. This is what happened to you.

In the future, if you want to stay on the safe side, don't use apt, go to the eclipse download page and grab the latest stable version. It's sufficient to uninstall eclipse though synaptic and then reinstall the downloaded version and then reinstall your plugins. So that when Natty comes in 2 months time, you don't have to redo everything again.

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