How to make my own eclipse plugin installable - eclipse

I creat an eclipse plugin that I finished.
I would like to "share" my plugin with some people without just send them the whole code and they have to "create" the plugin by copy paste the code.
How can I make an installation file/ other way to make this plugin installable for others.
Thanks

One option is to create a Feature project. (An Eclipse Feature is essentially a feature.xml file and build.properties file that specify a collection of one or more Eclipse plugins that will be included when the Feature is installed into an Eclipse application).
Feature projects allow you to choose which plugins to include in them when you create them using the New Feature Project Wizard.
Once your project is created, you will have the feature.xml file opened for you in its editor. There you will be able to fill in more meta data if desired, and you will be given links for Exporting and Publishing the feature for others to consume.
Follow the steps under "Exporting" in the Overview tab of the feature.xml editor and choose to deploy using the Export Wizard. I suggest that you choose to deploy to an Archive file.
Then you can send that resulting Archive file (zip file) to your people. Then have those people open their Eclipse instance and go to "Help -> Install New Software". Then choose "Add" to add an update site. Then choose "Archive" which will allow them to navigate to the zip file that you have sent them.
Once they select that, they will be on their way to installing your Feature which contains your plugin into their Eclispe installation.

You can send them the plugin jar file, and they can put it in their
dropins folder.

Eclipse will not let you install using an archive unless the you have an update site.

Related

How to change jre of eclipse product via repository update

We have a cdt eclipse product. We work on windows XP and Bundle JRE for this environment with the product option in launching page of product file does not work...
We want to upgrade our jre via update. We have the JRE in our previous bundle and dont want to copy paste new version manually but we want to do it via update repository... How can we do this ? Is it possible to change the JRE via update ?
You will need to create a p2 update site (possible with eclipse tycho) and these are the steps you need (kind of tedious)
Open a new workspace
Create a new feature project -> new -> plugin development > feature
Give your feature an ID and name
import your new jre bundle into the workspace and increment the version to what it should be.
go to your feature.xml in the feature project, click "included plugins" and add the jre bundle plugin.
Next in the site.xml (or category.xml based on what version of eclipse you have) of the update site you created select site map editor view, create a new category called "JRE Runtimes" or something like that. under that category add the feature you created using the wizard.
Then to build the p2 site In the sitemap view of the site.xml editor click "build all"
After that completes you can refresh the update site plugin and you will see a folder for plugins/features/ and other resource files for the update site. Then you can do a couple of things, the best is to zip that entire update site and upload to an FTP site or HTTP Site in its extracted state and if you give your users the URL they can go into the app, go to help -> install new software. Add a new update site using the URL you provide. Once they do that they can view the features to install and clicking on the feature you created will install the updated jre bundle version.
There are some more gotcha's though, if you have plugins in the app that specify a specific version of the jre bundle it will not use the new one. Best way is to not specify a version and it will use the newest one. Also going forward you should do this same process for your entire app so users can get updates using the p2 provisioning framework. If you want to automate the building of the update site look into eclipse tycho which can also upload the p2 site for you every release.
Hope that helps - Duncan Krebs

Eclipse Kura OSGi Dependency Management

Preface: I'm new to Eclipse, OSGi, and Kura
I'm trying to develop a Kura plug-in that depends on org.apache.httpcomponents.httpclient. I found an OSGi bundle for the package here.
Currently, the only way I'm able to use the plug-in (with the OSX Kura emulator) is to download httpclient-osgi-4.5.jar and add it to ~/Documents/workspace/target-definition/common/repository/plugins/. Otherwise I get a class not found error.
When I add the plugin to MANIFEST.MF either as with REQUIRE-PLUGIN or IMPORT-PACKAGE, Eclipse cannot find the package.
What's the correct way to require, fetch, and add to the classpath a remote dependency using Eclipse Kura/OSGi? Eclipse currently only looks in my local workspace for dependancies, is there an accepted way to fetch remote plugins?
Thanks for the help!
The bundles located in target-definition/common/repository/plugins are part of an M2 repository created by the Kura build. It is not enough to simply copy your required bundle to that directory. The solution I typically use to accomplish what you want is:
Double click the kura-equinox_3.8.1.target file located in target-definition. This should open in the Eclipse IDE.
Under "Locations", click "Add...". Then select "Directory" and "Next". Select the folder containing your required additional bundles and click "Finish".
Save the kura-equinox_3.8.1.target file and click "Set as Target Platform". Your new bundle should now be available in Eclipse.
Thanks,
--Dave
What for me works is;
Simply copied the bundle in ${workspace_loc}/target-definition/common/repository/plugins
Clicked on reload
Clicked on Set as Target Platform
After these steps, Eclipse is aware of my bundle and could able to use it anywhere.

Install plugin as locally instead of site

I have created a sample plug-in and I have them as folders like this:
Features
Plugins
Artifacts.jar
Content.jar
So I copied the features and plug-in in to the respective folder of Eclipse install. But still I didn’t see the plugin.
So one of my colleague told me to install software using site, I don’t know how to create site. Instead I want install as locally. Any ideas?
Use 'File > Export' and select 'Plug-in Development > Deployable Features' to create a directory or archive file.
Then use the 'Install New Software...' dialog. Click 'Add...' and use 'Local..' if you have a directory or 'Archive...' if you have an archive.
You may need to deselect the 'Group items by category' check box to see the contents of your install.

Json Editor Plugin installation?

I feel really stupid by asking this question, but how can I install Json Editor Plugin in my Eclipse Helios? I looked at the Forum in sourceforge, but I can't install it neither through .zip or by adding a web site. And will I need to change the execution environment to Java 1.6?
Here is what I did to get the Json Editor Plugin to show up in the Install Dialog.
By doing a little Google-ing, I found this page which describes the steps to install JsonEditorPlugin on 3.4.
After you have followed the first 6 steps, make sure that Group items by category is un-ticked. After that, you can then choose Json Editor Plugin to be installed from the local Zip archive that you have downloaded from the net.
Edit: as a side note, you must not have the unzipped contents of the zip archive in the dropins/ folder, otherwise it will appear as if the plugin is already installed.
Simply dropping the zip contents into the dropins folder however did work also.
Note: You must right click your .json file and choose 'Open with' -> 'Json Editor'
You can install plugins by just unzipping them into the dropins folder.
It does not matter if the zip file contains the parent folders "plugins" and/or "eclipse".
I would recommend Java 1.6 as it brings a better performance and the plugin might require Java 1.6. On your desktop shortcut you use following execution arguments:
eclipse -vm <path to jre 1.6 installation folder>\bin\javaw
Download jsonedit-repository-0.9.7.zip (or whatever) and put it in a folder you like.
In Eclipse Help --> Install New Software
Add --> Archive button and select the zip file.
Name it and press OK
Press button Next and Follow master of installation.
Then after opening json file possibly needed right click mouse on the file --> open with --> JSON editor

How to manually install software/plugin to Eclipse IDE?

I have downloaded a RAR file from the following location, to be (manually) installed to Eclipse (Helios). How can I perform the manual installation?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/eclipsesql/files/SQL%20Explorer%20RCP%20%28exc%20JRE%29/3.6.1/sqlexplorer_rcp-3.6.1.macosx.cocoa.x86.tgz/download
Instead of putting it directly into the plugins directory, it's better to use the dropins directory as this was created just for this purpose. Have a look here: http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox_p2_Getting_Started#Dropins
For sqlexplorer: do not download the full RCP version (as your link does), this one is standalone. Get this one instead: http://sourceforge.net/projects/eclipsesql/files/SQL%20Explorer%20Plugin/3.6.1/sqlexplorer_plugin-3.6.1_SR2.zip/download
Extract this to $eclipse_home$\dropins\sqlexplorer and restart Eclipse.
BUT: Using the SqlExplorer Update Site (http://eclipsesql.sourceforge.net/) would be an even better option (Help>Install new Software)
I have tried the installation with the explanation about the dropins folder and had to tweak it like that:
Unzip the distribution into your eclipse installation directory under the folder dropins. Your structure should be:
eclipse/
dropins/
eclipse/
features/
plugins/
Remove all other files and directories. There is some missing piece (file contents.xml), so that the distribution is no real p2 repository which leads to an error. The directories plugins and features are sufficient.
Restart your eclipse (I have done it with option -clean, not sure if that is necessary).
SQLExplorer is then installed and visible in the help, in different menus and with a new perspective.
I even was able to use it to have a look at my SQLite3 database of a rails3 application. Wow!! So I will give it a try.
From their website (http://www.sqlexplorer.org/):
Eclipse Plugin
Download
Download the Eclipse SQL Explorer plugin and extract the zip file in your eclipse directory (requires Eclipse 3.3 or better).
After restarting eclipse with the -clean option, a new SQL Explorer perspective should be available.
Eclipse Update Site
You can install and update Eclipse SQL Explorer via the eclipse update mechanism. The update site for Eclipse SQL Explorer is http://eclipsesql.sourceforge.net/
I always go for the update site option if they present it, it's easier and lets you do updates easily. To use the update mechanism just select Help > Insall New Software... then enter the update site, press Add and go through the wizard.