Eclipse Helios fails to load toy plugin

Question

I am trying to install a toy plugin that I wrote in Eclipse Helios 20100617-1415 under Fedora 12. Attempts at installing the plugin have all failed. The plugin does actually run when executed as an Eclipse Application (another copy of Eclipse is loaded and the plugin appears on the menu and does what it's supposed to). I put the jar file for the plugin in the /dropins/plugins directory and after several reboots Eclipse fails to load it and seems to not generate any error messages either. I also tried to load it directly using the Install New Software UI and that failed (added a directory where the toy plugin is and the response is: a dialog box pops up: No software site found at DIR_NAME. Do you wish to edit the location? At the same time in the name list area box behind the popup it says: Could not find file:DIR_NAME (the directory is valid and the jar file is there) - the other attempts are to load the jar file directly selecting archive instead of local in the Add Repository dialog - that too fails: first the jar name is mangled somewhat to jar:file:/DIR_NAME/TOY_NAME.jar!/ and then the same error messages come up already mentioned for just trying to use the directory location). So the installation mechanism is a complete failure but - how can I get it working? (Yes I can install plugins from the Eclipse marketPlace and other repositories). Thanks!

Answer 1

There are several ways to install your plug-in,

• put your plug-ins into "dropins" folder if your eclipse enables polling that folder. The structure should look like below,

-dropins

-cdt

 -features

 -plugins

-myplugin_1.0.0.jar

• export your plug-ins to your eclipse via menu 'File' - 'Export' - 'Plug-in development' - 'Deploy plug-ins and fragments' - 'Install to'