Are Eclipse Plugins Platform-Independent?

Question

I want to distribute an eclipse platform with pre-installed plugins to different users with different operation systems.

On the side http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ I have to choose the target platform for eclipse, so I downloaded it for Linux 32 and 64 bit and for windows 32 and 64 bit.

I want to distribute an eclipse with some pre-installed and also self written plugins to other people. Can I simply install the plugins in one eclipse installation and then copy the files from the /plugins folder to every /plugins folder of the other eclipse versions for linux and windows or are the plugins (also the pre-existing default plugins) in the /plugin folder also platform dependend and must be installed seperatly on the target platform?

Answer 1

Some are, some aren't. Eclipse supports the inclusion of native code in OSGi bundles, and then unpacks it and accesses it via JNI. The native code can be in separate 'fragments', and Eclipse won't necessarily download all the fragments for other architectures.

Answer 2

Well, here's the way I see it: Eclipse is written in Java, which is platform-independent. Eclipse's plugins are, therefor, written in Java, and must be platform-independent. Also, I've yet to encounter a plugin that wasn't platform-independent. So yes, to the best of my knowledge.