How do I use a 'newer' eclipse plugin with an older version of Eclipse?

Question

I'm forced to use an older version of Eclipse (I'm using QNX) and I have to use the TFS TEE plugin for source control. There's a TEE update out that I don't seem to be able to use.

I opened the old plugin zip to find: site.xml, features and plugins folders. I open my new plugin zip to find: artifacts.jar and content.jar (plus features and plugins folders)

So, is there a way to convert this new format to the older format so I can use this plugin update?

Answer 1

You don't.

An Eclipse plug-in is constructed for a specific version of Eclipse. It may work on a more recent version.

You have to use the older version of TFS TEE,

Answer 2

I'm afraid not. Newer versions of Team Explorer Everywhere have hard dependencies on functionality in newer versions of Eclipse or SWT. Even if you could convince Eclipse to install and load the newer plug-ins, it would crash frequently when trying to load classes or call methods that do not exist in your version of Eclipse and SWT.

While we take backward compatibility with older versions of Eclipse very seriously, at some point, development cost in supporting these old versions becomes very expensive. However, older versions of Team Explorer Everywhere should be able to talk to newer servers.