How to set the proxy configuration for a headless Eclipse application on Windows

Question

I have a script which needs to call one of the existing, headless Eclipse applications (example: the p2 director application) which use the Proxy API of org.eclipse.core.net for configuring its requests to HTTP servers.

On Linux, I can configure the Eclipse Proxy API by setting the environment variables http_proxy and https_proxy.

Is there similar solution for configuring the proxies from the command line in Windows?

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I've tried to set HTTP proxy configuration properties specified by Java (http.proxyHost, http.proxyPort, etc.) but this doesn't work. Setting the properties just results in a log entry from Eclipse informing me that the system properties are overwritten with the values from the preferences:

!ENTRY org.eclipse.core.net 1 0 2013-08-09 15:21:19.413
!MESSAGE System property http.proxyHost has been set to proxy by an external source. This value will be overwritten using the values from the preferences

!ENTRY org.eclipse.core.net 1 0 2013-08-09 15:21:19.414
!MESSAGE System property http.proxyPort has been set to 8080 by an external source. This value will be overwritten using the values from the preferences

So another option would be a headless application which allows to configure preferences. Does this application exist (preferrably as part of the standard Eclipse distributions)?

Answer 1

Proxy preferences for Eclipse applications are stored in the file

<eclipse-installation>/configuration/.settings/org.eclipse.core.net.prefs

So either you edit the settings via the Eclipse preferences UI (General / Network Connections) and then copy that file to your headless application, or you create/edit that manually:

eclipse.preferences.version=1
nonProxiedHosts=localhost|127.0.0.1
org.eclipse.core.net.hasMigrated=true
proxiesEnabled=true
proxyData/HTTP/hasAuth=false
proxyData/HTTP/host=<proxy.your.org>
proxyData/HTTP/port=<port>
proxyData/HTTPS/hasAuth=false
proxyData/HTTPS/host=<proxy.your.org>
proxyData/HTTPS/port=<port>
# - Set SOCKS proxy only if neccessary -
# proxyData/SOCKS/hasAuth=false
# proxyData/SOCKS/host=<proxy.your.org>
# proxyData/SOCKS/port=<port>
systemProxiesEnabled=false

HTH.

Answer 2

From what I could find out, it seems that setting the proxy from the command line is not possible in Windows – but I really hope that someone else has a better answer.

There was a bug report for the fact that Eclipse ignores the Java proxy configuration (bug 298813). This bug even included a patch, but unfortunately it was abandoned for a "more general solution" (bug 257443). That bug was originally planned for Eclipse 3.5, but up to now was never completed.

So this doesn't look good...

Answer 3

I was facing the same problem, and I tried different solutions mentioned here and in several blogs without having one working to me.

However... one solution I found is that if you have an x32 Eclipse IDE, and an x64 OS, setting will not always save, and you may face these problems.

I had this problem with Juno x32 + Win7 x64, now it's solved using Juno x64, and Kepler x64

So, check your OS/IDE and make sure that you have the right versions.

It may be the same problem as this question

Answer 4

Try to put the same properties (http.proxyHost and http.proxyPort) inside the eclipse.ini file into -vmargs section using -d (-Dhttp.proxyHost=htttp://yourproxy and -Dhttp.proxyPort=port)