With this the only painful thing I've faced till now is every time I've to install/download all of my plugins like Maven, SpringIDE, Subversive etc. Many provides local archive installation and many needs to be updated every time using Eclipse. This is very time consuming and also some times not possible in cases where I do not have internet connectivity for what so ever reason.
Recently I downloaded Galileo and again faced the same problem as I described above and this time I discovered that Eclipse has an inbuilt feature to import plugins from any of the existing eclipse install to new install without need to go to update site or download it from the internet. Here I'll display how to do this...
- Download latest Eclipse from download page and start the IDE.
- Setup a local repository to point to your old-eclipse-install's plugin download directory. Eclipse stores all downloaded plugins to <eclipse-install-directory>/p2 directory. Below are the steps to setup new local repository with Galileo
- Select Install New Software... from Help menu
- Click Add... button to add new repository. See below snapshot...
- Click on Local... button and select the p2 directory of your existing eclipse install. For e.g. if your existing eclipse is installed at C:/eclipse then browse for folder C:/eclipse/p2
- Provide appropriate name of your choice for this new repository and click OK.
- You should see the list of plugins available in your existing eclipse install. In case you do not see it then uncheck Group items by category checkbox. See below snapshot...
- Once your local repository is set, select all the plugins you want in your new install and click Next and then Finish.
- This will calculate the dependencies and then install the selected plugins from your existing/old install.
- Done.
- Jay
