Boostrapping new Eclipse machines with all the Plugins

Question

Bootstrapping Eclipse on new machines is such a time consuming process, you wind up asking yourself whether you really need each plugin. But there all handy, and help develop consistent habits.

Eclipse bootstrapping problems include:

• Explaining / documenting what needs to happen
• The actual time pasting in the right URLs and downloading
• Version compatibility and dependencies
• Eclipse likes to restart after each one
• The changeover to the Eclipse Marketplace means that some plugins and instructions you find on the web tend to be inconsistent, depending on when they were written.
• The Licenses... over and over and over... yes, yes, yes... I understand that the person installing needs to be aware of it, and have a chance to review them, but there's got to be a better way.

It'd be nice to have "patch file" (either binary or meta) that spells out what I want to add on top of stock Eclipse installation. I'd really like to find (or create) a 1 or 2 step process that sets up Eclipse, plus a favorite batch of plugins:

• subclipse
• m2eclipse
• jetty support like runjettyrun
• android sdk and plugin (or at least just the plugin)
• aspectj
• Web Objects / WOLiops
• python, other langs
• JVM Monitor, maybe EclEmma
• probably a git plugin pretty soon.

Does command line maven help with any of this? It seems like its repository management would fit at least part of the functionality.

Presbyterian

Why don't you just take a snapshot of your eclipse install after you have downloaded all of your plugins. Then save the entire directory. Since it's java, you just add the directory and you're installed. – Jonell

Answer 1

Solution 1 is too search for more advanced Eclipse distributions. For example, STS (Spring Tool Suite) comes with

• AspectJ
• EGit
• m2e
• (and of course) Spring IDE

Scarletscarlett

Answer 2

On a machine with an Eclipse installation matching your needs use File -> Export -> Install -> Installed software items to file. Import the generated file using the same menu on all other machines.

Rogerson

From what Eclipse version has this feature arrived? – Scarletscarlett

3.7 Milestone 6. help.eclipse.org/indigo/… – Rogerson

Linked "Eclipse IDE: install set of plugins" question is reopened. #15480013 – Scarletscarlett

Answer 3

As Scott says, a good approach is to simply package a fully prepared Eclipse installation once all the plugins you need are installed. The downside is that you have to update most plugins afterwards.

Another option is to use Yoxos. With it, you can create a profile and configure it with all the plugins you need (and apparently Yoxos can do more than that).

Finally, this page might interest you concerning the configuration side of things.

Woolsey

Thanks. The other thread also mentioned zipping up template directories. I'll checkout Yoxos and the workspacemechanic mentioned on the other page. So that's 3 choices. It just strikes me as odd that, with all the tools we use for patches, projects and versioning, that our central tool, Eclipse, doesn't follow that model. OK. – Presbyterian

Answer 4

One small trick can be done with m2e-android - Android Configurator for M2E Maven Integration. If installing it on clean Eclipse, it will also automatically resolve to install :

• m2e
• Android Developer Tools (ADT)

Scarletscarlett