What is the dropins folder in Eclipse/JBoss Developer Studio?

Question

I am new to Eclipse and was wondering what is the dropins folder? Where exactly is it(I am on Windows 8)?

Basically i wanted to use this dark UI theme Roger Dudler made (https://github.com/eclipse-color-theme/eclipse-ui-themes) for Eclipse Juno. If you see near the bottom of this link, he says to place the zip folder into the "dropins folder". I have no idea :(

Thanks

Gschu

Answer 1

dropins directory in eclipse (Path is Eclipse_home/dropins, which is at same level as plugins folder is present in eclipse) is a default watched directory.
Instead of installing plugins you simply put them under this folder (in your case com.github.eclipsecolortheme.themes_1.0.0.201207121019.jar) and restart the eclipse they will be picked up automatically on next start.

Stertor

Answer 2

Please note that the dropins folder is not supported or encouraged in JBoss Developer Studio.

Plugin providers should really create an update site (or update site zip) containing their plugin bundles, and then users can simply do Help > Install new ... to install correctly using the fully supported p2/Install Manager method of installation.

Note too that Tycho now supports creation of update sites from nothing more than a pom.xml and category.xml file, and you don't need to create features anymore toadd your to the category.xml.

So there's really no reason to provide a plugin w/o wrapping it with the correct p2 metadata.

Blucher

A valid reason to use the dropins folder is when a plugin installed from the Eclipse Marketplace and updated to the latest version failed to launch, and the user needed to revert to an older, but fully working plugin. – Nomarchy

Answer 3

The dropins folder is if not exists it must be created. The location is the same as the executable of the IDE.

Trifolium