Portable Eclipse Juno with plugins

3
votes

I am currently trying to make an Eclipse istallation with installed plugins portable, so that you only have to copy the whole "eclipse"-folder to another system and have the same setup as on the original system.

My problem now is, that since eclipse 4.2 (?) when using Help > Install new Software... plugins are installed externally into the folder
C:/Users/Username/.eclipse/org.eclipse.platform_4.2.0_identifier
and not into the folder where the "eclipse.exe" is located:
C:/Program Files (x86)/eclipse

Now my question is if it is possible to make eclipse install additional plugins into the plugins/features-folder of eclipse's home folder (C:/Program Files (x86)/eclipse).

Unfortunately, it isn't possible to use the dropins-folder, because one plugin that shall be installed only exists as an update site.

I'm using
Windows 7 Professional Service Pack 1 64bit
with
Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers
Version: Juno Service Release 2
32-bit (to provide portability).

Greets :)

2
eclipsewindowspluginsportabilityeclipse-juno

2 Answers

1
votes

Do not put your eclipse installation under the "Program Files" folder. Eclipse will install all plugins to its own folder by default, unless that folder is not writable from Eclipse. And the "Program Files" folder should not be writable by you (unless you are using administrative access rights). Only the trusted installer service account should modify that folder (following Windows guidelines).

Therefore unzip Eclipse somewhere else into a location where anyone is allowed to write, install your plugins and zip the whole folder again.

As an alternative to that ZIP package you may want to look at File -> Export -> Install -> Software items to file, where you can export (and re-import) a list of your already installed plugins.

1
votes

What mack is trying to do should work, this is essentially what the eclipse foundation do to provide the various distros. The plugin that is only available as an update site could be installed into and existing in-installation then copied to the new distro. Only trick is making sure you have all the feature and plugin jar files.