Eclipse Cookbook

12.1. Installing a Plug-in

Problem

You want to install an Eclipse plug-in.

Solution

Download the plug-in, and expand it in the Eclipse plugins directory.

Discussion

Numerous plug-ins are available already, and many are free for the downloading. To install a plug-in, stop Eclipse if it’s running, and download the plug-in to the eclipse directory, the directory that contains the workspace and plugins directories.

Tip

You can find more than 450 Eclipse plug-ins at http://www.eclipse-plugins.2y.net/eclipse/, and most of them are free. About 7,000 plug-ins are downloaded everyday from this site. Many of them support what Eclipse left out—especially drag-and-drop development for environments such as Swing, Struts, and SWT.

Eclipse plug-ins come zipped or tarred, and you typically uncompress them in the eclipse directory. When uncompressed, the files for the plug-ins are stored automatically in the plugins and features directories.

Each plug-in gets its own folder in the Eclipse plugins directory. Typically, you’ll find the following files in every plug-in’s folder:

*.jar

The code for the plug-in, stored in a .jar file

about.html

Shown when the user requests information about the plug-in

icons

Directory for icons (the standard is GIF format)

lib

Holds library .jar files

plugin.xml

The plug-in manifest, which is what describes the plug-in to Eclipse

plugin.properties

Holds text data used by plugin.xml

Tip

Although you usually uncompress plug-ins in the eclipse directory, some plug-ins ...