I am using Google's Workspace Mechanic to configure my eclipse environment. All seems to work fine, except that for any fresh installation, the workspace mechanic opens up with a default location of its own (~/.eclipse/mechanic) to look for preference files.
As given in their documentation i tried including their code
(/instance/com.google.eclipse.mechanic/mechanicSourceDirectories=/shared/eclipse/tasks\:${user_homedir}/.eclipse/mechanic)
in my plugin_customization.ini , but it does not work for me.
Does anyone have any other idea as to how to achieve this?
Quite late, but I just needed the same configuration.
First locate your plugin_customization.ini (eg. 'find -name plugin_customization.ini' in your eclipse folder).
I had two files with same name, located in org.eclipse.platform and org.eclipse.epp.package.jee.
For me, the jee one was relevant and you can configure it as JSON Array.
com.google.eclipse.mechanic/mechanicSourceDirectories=["http\://server/mechanics/tasks.json","/tmp"]
This example shows how to configure a folder (/tmp) and via http location.
Under Windows, I found that when using the recent Eclipse Juno and the latest Workspace Mechanic I had to do the following:
Edit the (Java EE):
...\Eclipse_Juno_SR1\plugins\org.eclipse.epp.package.jee_1.5.1.20120828-0743\plugin_customization.ini
and add the following line at the end:
com.google.eclipse.mechanic/mechanicSourceDirectories=c:\\...\\eclipse_extensions\\WorkspaceMechanics
in order for the plugin to recognize the above directory as the shared folder...
The plugin preferences now correctly references the folder !
The documentation is for Eclipse on Linux/Unix. If you are running Eclipse on Windows you will need a different path.
Another aproch is to put the preferencces in another file and point to that file from your eclipse.ini with a line such as
-Declipse.pluginCustomization=/var/wsm/current/my.properties
or eclipse startup with
eclipse -pluginCustomization /var/wsm/current/my.properties
The following worked for me (for Eclipse Luna in Windows).
Open the Luna/plugins folder
Search for a folder that begins with org.eclipse.epp.package.
(and I ended up with org.eclipse.epp.package.java_4.4.1.20140925-1820)
Go inside that folder and edit plugin_customization.ini
Append the following at the end (to point to \\sharedserver\share\DEV\Workspace-Prefs-Luna):
#Workspace Mechanic Settings
com.google.eclipse.mechanic/mechanicSourceDirectories=\\\\\sharedserver\\share\\DEV\\Workspace-Prefs-Luna
Save and Close the file
Restart Eclipse
Related
I have tried all different settings, and yes, I m aware of eclipse.ini and config.ini and also tried different command line arguments! Nothing solved my problem!
All attempts and still each time I run eclipse.exe it wants write to my userhome i.e. the .eclipse and .p2 folders.
I have tried with all settings bellow among others, in different combinations too:
-Dosgi.user.area=file:/c:/eclipse-conf/e46
-Dosgi.configuration.area=file:/c:/eclipse-conf/e46
-Dosgi.instance.area=file:/c:/eclipse-conf/e46
-Declipse.p2.data.area=file:/c:/eclipse-conf/e46/p2
-Dorg.eclipse.equinox.p2.configurationFolder=file:/c:/eclipse-conf/e46/p2
-Dorg.eclipse.equinox.p2.installFolder=file:/c:/eclipse-conf/e46/p2
-Dorg.eclipse.equinox.p2.reconciler.dropins.directory=file:/c:/eclipse-conf/e46/p2
-Dorg.eclipse.equinox.p2.cache=file:/c:/eclipse-conf/e46/p2
-Dorg.eclipse.equinox.p2.roaming=file:/c:/eclipse-conf/e46/p2
-Dorg.eclipse.equinox.p2.cache.shared=file:/c:/eclipse-conf/e46/p2
This did not help! Well it writes to /e46 and /e46/p2 folder but it also creates/writes to c:\users\mrsimplemind\.eclipse & .eclipseextension & .p2
Even if I manually create the folders before it will not help.
Now please anyone here had success to fully isolate eclipse configuration output?
The only way I achieved this was by changing the user.home but I don't like this workaround as there are stuff in the original "user.home" that will be needed in eclipse, e.g. .ssh , .git , .m2 maven etc. I don't want to keep duplicates of profile settings for each eclipse user.home
I just want to isolate eclipse, this should be configurable! I don't like the outputs to user.home .. It is not an option! I want to have control of what eclipse creates in what folders, for each eclipse installation.
(I can only tell from windows os, I don't know how if Eclipse on Mac works better with the settings above)
I dont use OOMPH installer, some comments below are misleading
The method I have tried to solve this problem has been nearly successful. Whether this is an answer for you will depend on your minimum acceptable level of quality.
If you are trying to prevent your Eclipse IDE from filling up your home drive, this technique will work (it has worked for me). It should not matter if Eclipse was installed by Oomph or from a plain zip, as nothing Oomph-related is modified in this solution.
If the requirement is that the user home p2 folder can be completely deleted and yet Eclipse still works without recreating that directory, no I have not been able to achieve that yet.
I am posting this as a partial solution, perhaps in the hope someone else can build upon it to figure out a better workaround. Obviously the perfect solution would be if eclipse had a configurable download location and the installer actually installed all software to only the location selected, but that requires the Eclipse developers to fix the "P2" component of the product. What follows is only a workaround.
Strategy
The premise is that the download pool folder always seems to be hardcoded into the config files to be under the home folder of the user that ran the eclipse installer. The essence of this workaround is to create a fake user home folder in the location of your choice, do a massive find-and-replace in the config files, and then force the Java system property to use that new folder as "user.home" which fools Eclipse into using it for its downloads.
Method
This was tested on Eclipse 4.7 Oxygen.3A on Mint Linux.
Extensive brain surgery of the Eclipse installation folder is needed.
Install Eclipse somewhere other than your user's home drive.
In this example the Oomph installer was given /media/LINAPPS/ubuntu-apps/eclipse-oxy as the install target, which then creates /media/LINAPPS/ubuntu-apps/eclipse-oxy/eclipse during the installation.
Start Eclipse at least once, then close it and make sure Eclipse is not running.
Create a new fake user home drive folder underneath the Eclipse folder.
In this example I created eclipse-oxy/eclipse/fakeHome
Copy the entire (hidden) p2 directory from your user home directory into the new fakeHome.
eg cp -R /home/$USER/.p2 /media/LINAPPS/ubuntu-apps/eclipse-oxy/eclipse/fakeHome/.p2
Go to the eclipse folder and edit the eclipse.ini in a text editor. Make these 2 changes:
set the line after --launcher.library to be the copy of the pool in the new location relative to the eclipse folder, eg : fakeHome/.p2/pool/...etc...
append a new system property setting to end of the file after all the other vm arguments, and set user.home to the new fake user home directory.
eg: -Duser.home=/media/LINAPPS/ubuntu-apps/eclipse-oxy/eclipse/fakeHome
Edit the file eclipse/configuration/org.eclipse.update/platform.xml. Find the first <site> entry and change the url attribute to be the new pool folder relative to the eclipse folder. eg: url="file:fakeHome/.p2/pool/"
Edit the file /media/LINAPPS/ubuntu-apps/eclipse-oxy/eclipse/configuration/org.eclipse.equinox.simpleconfigurator/bundles.info and again find and replace all references to you user home's p2 folder with the new p2 folder under the fakeUser. You could find over 1000 matches to replace here. It again seems to be possible to make these relative to the eclipse folder, so a path of "fakeHome/.p2/pool/....." will work.
Go to the new /eclipse/fakeHome/.p2 folder and edit both of the files there "pools.info" and "profiles.info". Again find any reference to your real user home and replace it with the path to the fakeUser folder. Use the full pathname (from root) for the pool location in both of these files.
Unpack, edit, and repack the latest profileRegistry. Find the folder
eclipse/fakeHome/.p2/org.eclipse.equinox.p2.engine/profileRegistry/_media_LINAPPS_ubuntu-apps_eclipse-oxy_eclipse.profile/. Now find the latest timestamped gz file in that folder. For example it might be called "1529736854441.profile.gz".
gunzip that .gz file. Edit the .profile file and again replace any mention of your real user home with the new fakeUser folder. For example in my installation one of the first property settings had to be changed to
<property name='org.eclipse.equinox.p2.cache' value='/media/LINAPPS/ubuntu-apps/eclipse-oxy/eclipse/fakeHome/.p2/pool'/>
Delete the old gz file, then gzip the profile into a gz, so it has replaced the old one.
I also edited the file /eclipse/fakeHome/.p2/org.eclipse.equinox.p2.core/cache/artifacts.xml and replaced the repository name with a reference to the new location inside fakeHome, but I am not sure this was necessary to get eclipse working.
Start eclipse.
Results
After doing the above, I tried to add Install New Software from the Help menu. After downloading lots of new plugins from Redhat and Spring, the new fakeHome pool occupies 900MB, but the original user home pool is still less than 400MB which is what it was as soon as eclipse had been installed. So it has been successful at moving the download cache of the updater and no files get updated in the old location, but two directories under .p2 still seem to have their timestamps touched.
If anyone finds this useful, or figures out how to improve it, please let me know.
This works on Windows 7, Eclipse Oxygen:
Install Eclipse, but DON'T launch it yet
Edit eclipse.ini and, underneath -vmargs, add an entry to change user home to be a shared folder:
e.g.
-vmargs
-Duser.home=C:\Development
Launch Eclipse. Should see ".eclipse", ".tooling", etc folders created in shared folder, and nothing created under your user folder.
As of Eclipse Java 2019-06 for Windows 10 64-bit
I added my eclipse.ini below:
-vmargs
-D"user.home=C:\your_path_here"
The 3 folders of .eclipse, .p2, & .tooling appeared after I started and then closed eclipse.
I am not sure when these are written into the new path, but it worked in my Windows 10.
Did you try adding the following line to eclipse.ini below -vmargs:
-Dosgi.configuration.area=#user.home/.someFolder
which will use .someFolder instead of .eclipse
or
-Dosgi.configuration.area=C:\path_to_desired_location\.eclipseJAVA
I recently installed eclipse Luna for Windows 64-bit. I have the ini file customized. Specifically, I have to set the VM path because the reference to Java on the path is for a different JVM that does not work for eclipse.
Every time I close and reopen eclipse, the vm entry in the ini file is removed, so I have to set it all over again and open eclipse. Is there a setting in Luna to change this?
Eclipse itself doesn't do this; there are plugins which sometimes rewrite the ini file to "fix problems" (usually giving Eclipse more memory) and I've seen cases where Eclipse was started with a script that replaced the ini file with a "known good" copy.
In either case, you will have to examine your installation. Use the "About" dialog to find out which plugins are installed and then find out what they are and what they do. One of them is the culprit.
One way to work around the problem is to create a copy of the file as eclipse.config and use a CMD script to start Eclipse. The CMD script should copy eclipse.config to eclipse.ini and then start Eclipse. That way, anyone can change the INI file but it won't matter.
When I launch Eclipse it starts with one of the workspaces I created and selected "don't ask again" (standardly, Eclipse asks about which workspace to start with during the startup).
So it must store somewhere which workspace to use. Where does it store this piece of information?
In
$HOME/.eclipse/org.eclipse.platform_3.7.0_155965261/configuration/.settings
there is a file
org.eclipse.ui.ide.prefs
where it is stored.
With Eclipse Juno, I can see this information in:
eclipse\configuration\.settings file.
I guess you are looking for RECENT_WORKSPACES and SHOW_WORKSPACE_SELECTION_DIALOG vars.
The settings have changed since this question was posted, as newer versions of Eclipse have been released.
With Eclipse Luna, navigate to $ECLIPSE_HOME/eclipse/configuration/.settings and the file org.eclipse.ui.ide.prefs contains settings like this (Windows file configuration shown):
MAX_RECENT_WORKSPACES=5
RECENT_WORKSPACES=C\:\\src\\eclipse-workspaces\\luna\\MyApp\nC\:\\src\\eclipse-workspaces\\luna\\MyOtherApp
RECENT_WORKSPACES_PROTOCOL=3
SHOW_WORKSPACE_SELECTION_DIALOG=true
eclipse.preferences.version=1
Each entry in RECENT_WORKSPACES appears to be delimited by \n with no spaces. Whenever I manually shuffle my workspaces around (which is rare, but it happens), I've had great success hand-editing this file, saving it, and having the new paths show up just fine in the Workspace Lancher/Select a Workspace dialog.
You have eclipse configuration files in "eclipse_home"/configuration and the one you may looking for is in settings directory : org.eclipse.ui.ide.prefs
I was facing an issue with Spring Tool Suite 4. The workspace used to give an error and I wasn't able to select other workspace also. With the help of some answers already given, I could locate the configuration in $ECLIPSE_HOME\sts-4.7.1.RELEASE\configuration.settings\org.eclipse.epp.mpc.ui.prefs
I removed RECENT_WORKSPACES property (after you try to restart, it adds default entry again) and changed
SHOW_WORKSPACE_SELECTION_DIALOG=true
STS started showing workspace selection dialog again.
If Eclipse has been installed with ubuntu-make, the file location is ~/.local/share/umake/ide/eclipse-jee/configuration/.settings/org.eclipse.ui.ide.prefs.
I just downloaded Eclipse Juno onto my machine. I extracted the files to an Eclipse subdirectory in "C:\Program Files". When I try to launch eclipse from here, it works great! But I don't want to have to navigate to this directory every time I want to launch eclipse. I tried just moving the executable to my Desktop, but then when I try to run it I get this message:
The eclipse executable launcher was unable to locate its companion library.
How do I let eclipse know where it's companion library is if I don't plan to have them in the same folder? Please be very specific.
Thanks!
You dont move the executable to your desktop because the executable needs to be in the same directory with other files where it was. get it back and then make a shortcut or link to it. you are free to make the shortcut or link where you want.
Well i had the same problem sometime back, and i figured out that since i've changed the location of my elcipse.exe , it has some how effected the "eclipse.ini " file
1.Path to -startup
D:\ < elcipse folder> elcipse:\ plugins\org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.3.0.v20120522-1813.jar \this is the start up jar file.
2.Path to shared lucher library
D:\ < elcipse folder> elcipse:\ org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_1.1.200.v20120522-1813 \this is the shared launcher library jar file.
just set the follwing two paths and ti will start up again like befor..
Happy coding..
This is a bug filed with Eclipse for Windows and Mac:
When attempting to launch Eclipse (double click on Eclipse.app), the launch fails. The only action is a dialog box with this message:' the eclipse executable launcher was unable to locate its companion shared library'. I found an online description of the problem and the workaround here:
Specifically, as per the instructions above:
I opened the Eclipse.app package, located eclipse.ini, edited it
searched the plugins folder for something matching org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.carbon.
copied the maching folder name (from plugins)
pasted it as the terminating portion of the path for --launcher.library
replaced the --launcher.library line with that path
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=288112
Eclipse Neon, 2017:
I copied my old .p2 folder found in my home.
Ran eclipse again and it worked.
It used to be that you could just copy eclipse as a zip and it would work fine, but it seems some plugins now rely on the .p2 folder.
Since Eclipse 3.5 there seems to be no option to have drop a plugin jar ( not a feature ) in the Eclipse base directory and have it picked up at next startup.
Is there any possiblity to have plain plugins jars installed in Eclipse 3.5?
Since the advent of p2, you should be using the dropins directory instead.
To be completely clear create "plugins" under "/dropins"
and make sure to restart eclipse with the "-clean" option.
Simplest way - just put in the Eclipse plugins folder. You can start Eclipse with the -clean option to make sure Eclipse cleans its' plugins cache and sees the new plugin.
In general, it is far more recommended to install plugins using proper update sites.
For Eclipse Mars (I've just verified that) you to do this (assuming that C:\eclipseMarsEE is root folder of your Eclipse):
Add plugins folder to C:\eclipseMarsEE\dropins so that it looks like:
C:\eclipseMarsEE\dropins\plugins
Then add plugin you want to install into that folder:
C:\eclipseMarsEE\dropins\plugins\someplugin.jar
Start Eclipse with clean option.
If you are using shortcut on desktop then just right click on Eclipse
icon > Properties and in Target
field add: -clean like this: C:\eclipseMarsEE\eclipse.exe -clean
Start Eclipse and verify that your plugin works.
Remove -clean option from Target field.
go to Help -> Install New Software... -> Add -> Archive.... Done.
in Eclipse 4.4.1
copy jar in "C:\eclipse\plugins"
edit file "C:\eclipse\configuration\org.eclipse.equinox.simpleconfigurator\bundles.info"
add jar info.
example:
com.soft4soft.resort.jdt,2.4.4,file:plugins\com.soft4soft.resort.jdt_2.4.4.jar,4,false
restart Eclipse.
This is how you can go about it:
Close Eclipse
Download a jar plugin (let's assume its testNG.jar)
Copy testNG.jar to a certain folder (say C:\Project\resources\plugins)
In your Eclipse installation folder, there is a folder named dropins (could be C:\eclipse\dropins), create a .link file in that folder, (like plugins.link)
Open this file with any text editor and enter this one line:
path=C:/Project/resources/plugins
Save the file and start Eclipse.
And you are good to go!
Please do not forget to change your backward slashes in your plugins folder path to forward slashes on step 5. I used to forget and it would take my time unnecessarily.