Updating Eclipse
I’ve just found a way of keeping installed plugins across eclipse upgrades. I am not sure whether it is a better way than the usual export, update, import, download process
…but it works and saves you the re-download. What I’ve done is to create an eclipse extension. I’ve created the an extension folder containing the
“features” and the “plugins” directories as well as an empty “.eclipseextension” file. In eclipse go to the “Help” menu and under
“Software Updates” select “Manage Configuration”. There you can add the eclipse extension and after restarting the IDE it should have all the old plugins
available. This works at least with eclipse 3.2.
Update: this can done even easier! On the install dialog there is a “Change Location” button. I’ve pointed it to my “.eclipse” directory and it create the
extension for me. Sweet!