Installing Plug-ins in the Eclipse Environment

Laurie Williams, Ben Smith and Sarah Smith
CSC 326 - Software Engineering
Department of Computer Science
North Carolina State University

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0.0 Outline
1.0 Installing a Plug-in with an Update Site
2.0 Installing a Plug-in Manually
3.0 Updating Installed Plug-ins
4.0 Plug-ins Used in CSC 326
5.0 Installing All Plug-ins At Once
1.0 Installing a Plug-in with an Update Site

Most plug-ins will have an update site, making it easy to add and update plug-ins within Eclipse. Steps 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 outline how to setup a connection to an update site. Section 3.0 outlines how to update a plug-in from an already existent update site.

1.1 Find the URL of the update site for the plug-in. A list of the plugins used in these tutorials can be found in Section 4.0.

1.2 Create a connection to an update site within Eclipse (The directions may vary slightly depending on what version of Eclipse you are using, but the idea is the same across all 3.x releases. These directions are specific to Eclipse 3.1).

1.2.1 Select Help > Software Updates > Find and Install. Select Search for new features to install. Click Next.

1.2.2 Click the New Remote Site button. Give the update site a name, such as the name of the plug-in, and type in the update site URL . Click OK. A new update site will be added to the list.

1.2.3 Check the update site that you want to update from (you may select more than one!). Click Finish.

1.2.4 If the update site has several mirrors (like the Eclipse update site) select the mirror you wish to update from. Click OK.

1.2.5 Press the + button next to the plug-in you want to install. This will list all possible features you can install. Select the features that you want to install. Click Next.

1.2.6 You will need to accept the terms of the licence agreement(s) of the feature(s) that you are installing. Click Next.

1.2.7 A list of feature(s) you are installing will be provided. Click Finish to start the install.

1.2.8 You will need to verify the features that you installed. Click Install or Install All to finish the installation.

1.2.9 You will now be asked to restart the workbench. Click Yes.
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2.0 Installing a Plug-in Manually

If a plug-in does not have an update site, then you will be able to download the plug-in as a zip file. To install the plug-in, unzip the file into the Eclipse installation directory (or the plug-in directory depending on how the plug-in is packaged). The plug-in will not appear until you have restarted your workspace (Reboot Eclipse).

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3.0 Updating Installed Plug-ins

If you have already created an update site for a plug-in, it is easy to look for new updates.

3.1 Select Help > Software Updates > Find and Install.

3.2 Select Search for updates of currently installed features. Click Next.

3.3 Check the update sites that you want to check for new features. Select Finish.

3.4 If there are features to install then you will install the features as in step 2.1.5.
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4.0 Plug-ins Used in CSC 326
  • Subclipse (Eclipse 3.0.1 or later): plug-in for Subversion, a concurrent management system (no direct download).
  • Continuous Testing (Eclipse 3.1): runs JUnit test cases concurrently with development (download).
  • FITRunner (Eclipse 3.0 or later): runs FIT tests in Eclipse (download).
  • Metrics (Eclipse 3.1): calculates metrics for a Java project (download).
  • djUnit (Eclipse 3.1)*: runs jUnit tests with the added feature of showing coverage metrics (download).
  • FindBugs (Eclipse 3.0.1 or later)*: a static analysis tool that searches for common bug patterns in source code (download).
  • Sysdeo (Eclipse 3.1)*: allows Tomcat configuration and management from within Eclipse. Does not include Tomcat! For a detailed description of how to use Tomcat, check out the Web-based Applications tutorial (download).
  • EclipseUML (Eclipse 3.1 or later)*: UML plug-in for Eclipse. EclipseUML has it's own installation program (download).

Those plug-ins without an update site have an astrisk (*) after their name. They will have to be installed manually. For manual installation instructions, see Section 2.0. A list of the update sites for plug-ins that have them have been compiled into an XML file (right-click, save as). To use this file, follow steps 4.1-4.x.

4.1 Download the XML file containing the majority of the update sites (above) to a location you can remember.

4.2 Select Help > Software Updates > Find and Install. Select Search for new features to install. Click Next.

4.3 On the page "Update Sites to Visit," click "Import Sites..." Select the file plugins.xml from its location in step 4.1.

4.4 Continue from step 1.2.3.
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5.0 Installing All Plug-ins At Once

If you would like the latest version of Eclipse, MyEclipse and all the plugins in one package, check out the installer information page.
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Installing Eclipse Plug-ins ©2006 North Carolina State University, Laurie Williams, Sarah Smith , Ben Smith
Email Sarah Smith with any questions or comments about this tutorial.
Last Updated: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 4:33:23 PM