Eclipse Plug-in Management Summary

You can simply place plugin in the features and plugins directories of the Eclipse SDK itself for plugin installation, but this approach is not conducive to plugin management:

Although you can upgrade yourself through the Eclipse SDK's update capabilities, we generally choose to download the new version completely because of the speed, so we need to pick out the plugin that was later installed in the Eclipse SDK directory and copy it to the new version of Eclipse. SDK directory, if such a plugin more words will be a bit of trouble. There are times when there are multiple versions of the Eclipse SDK, and obviously we don't want to copy these plugin to each version of the Eclipse SDK, and the Eclipse platform is supporting the installation of plugin into other directories, However, it is required for these directories: The directory must have a subdirectory named Eclipse. The eclipse subdirectory must have a. eclipseextension file, plugin itself placed under the features and plugins directory under the Eclipse subdirectory. One such location is an Eclipse Extension,.eclipseextension file that describes the eclipse extension, including three name, ID, and version; You can have multiple eclipse extension , specifically create several eclipse extension, which plugin each eclipse extension contains, depending on the situation, such as putting a few plugin close together in an eclipse extension.

Obviously we have to tell Eclipse to platform the location of these eclipse extension, there are two ways to do this:

When Eclipse is started, open Help->software updates/manager Configuration, add Eclipse location with Add an Extension extesnion, The specified location will be stored in the current configuration to build a links directory in the Eclipse directory where Eclipse platform is located, with a list of files in the end of. Link, specifying eclipse in the file Extension position, each line one, format is path=location, the path delimiter is a forward slash, if use backslash must use two to escape

The first approach is to save the location of the eclipse extension in the current configuration, so the eclipse extension specified in this way is specific to configuration, Different configuration can have different eclipse extension configurations, you can select a configuration at startup with the-configuration option, but it seems that when Eclipse is added Extension can not be deleted, can only be disable, and a number of configuration also brought about the burden of management; the second method is clearer, but it is configuration insensitive, No matter which configuration run these eclipse extension are visible, there is no need to worry about the memory footprint, because Eclipse plugin is lazy loading, the plugin is not used to occupy memory space , but there may be plugin conflict issues, such as two plug-ins in the same extension point extension, and the extension point processing is not configurable, such as the choice of extension strategy is to find the first extension, At this point, if we want to run the extension right in the second place, then there is a problem, it may be necessary to use both methods.

After the eclipse extension is configured, the plugin in these eclipse extension and plugin in Eclipse PLATFORM/SDK, in accordance with the extension and extension point relationships, Together form a network of Plug-ins, where the location of each plugin is no different, and you can even specify that you run the product in Eclipse extension.

A typical plugin package will include the Eclipse directory, so just extract the package directly into the selected Eclipse extension directory, but as mentioned earlier, to become a true Eclipse extension directory, You will also need a. eclipseextension file, which, in addition to being created manually, allows eclipse to set up plugin when you install it from the update site, as long as you select the change location to specify a directory when the installation dialog box pops up.