Recipe 12.1 Installing a Plug-in
12.1.1 Problem
You want to install an Eclipse
plug-in.
12.1.2 Solution
Download the plug-in, and expand it in
the Eclipse
plugins directory.
12.1.3 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.
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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.
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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
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Although you usually uncompress plug-ins in the
eclipse directory, some
plug-ins are designed to be unzipped in the
plugins directory. If installation instructions
for the plug-in are unavailable, open the plug-in using an unzip or
untar tool, and take a look at how it'll expand
itself�the file plugin.xml always has to
go into a subdirectory of the plugins directory.
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That's all you need to do to install a plug-in.
After expanding the plug-in's compressed file, start
Eclipse again. You might see a dialog indicating that configuration
changes are pending; restart Eclipse again if necessary.
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