Regulary, people ask me how to install Eclipse plugins offline. My update site http://www.junginger.biz/eclipse/ is not an option for offline users, and there is no dedicated download. Fortunately it is possible to download the plugins using my update site directly. Some background information follows, but for your convenience, here are the direct links to my plugins:
ExploreFS 1.0.0
RSSView 1.3.2
FreeMem 1.3.0

The only thing to consider is that the links refer to a specific version, so make sure it is the current one. After you downloaded a plugin, simply place in the plugins directory of your Eclipse installation and (re)start Eclipse.

To dive into this subject a little deeper, let me explain the meaing of update site, feature and plugin in the context of Eclipse. An update site is the web site where the plugins are stored along with some meta information. The later can be found in the file “site.xml” on the update site, e.g. http://www.junginger.biz/eclipse/site.xml. This XML file describes which features and versions are available. If you open my site.xml, it will look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<site>
   <feature url="features/biz.junginger.FreeMemFeature_1.3.0.jar"
         id="biz.junginger.FreeMemFeature" version="1.3.0">
      <category name="FreeMem"/>
   </feature>
   <feature url="features/biz.junginger.RssViewFeature_1.2.5.jar" 
         id="biz.junginger.RssViewFeature" version="1.2.5">
      <category name="RSS_View"/>
   </feature>
   <feature url="features/biz.junginger.RssViewFeature_1.3.2.jar" 
         id="biz.junginger.RssViewFeature" version="1.3.2">
      <category name="RSS_View"/>
   </feature>
   <feature url="features/biz.junginger.ExploreFS_Feature_1.0.0.jar" 
         id="biz.junginger.ExploreFS_Feature" version="1.0.0">
      <category name="ExploreFS"/>
   </feature>
   <category-def name="FreeMem" label="FreeMem (Eclipse 2.x and 3.x)"/>
   <category-def name="RSS_View" label="RSS View (Eclipse 3.x)"/>
   <category-def name="ExploreFS" label="ExploreFS"/>
</site>

To go on, it is important to understand what a feature is. When speaking of an Eclipse plugin one often refers to a feature, which may actually be a set of plugins. A feature provides certain functionality to end users and may technically consist of one or more plugins. Coming back to the site.xml, the interesting information is the url attribute of the feature tag. It points us to the feature jar in relation to the update site. This jar contains a feature.xml file carrying information about the feature, e.g. which plugins it consists of and where to find them. Example of the plugin section:

   <plugin
         id="biz.junginger.rss.eclipse.RssPlugin"
         download-size="96"
         install-size="96"
         version="1.3.2"/>

Finally, we have all parts necessary to construct the URL:

• update site URL
• “plugins/” subdirectory
• plugin id
• underscore
• plugin version
• “.jar”

Thus, the URL of the ongoing example would be:

http://www.junginger.biz/eclipse/plugins/biz.junginger.rss.eclipse.RssPlugin_1.3.2.jar

Eclipse plugin developers do not directly handle these files, however. Instead, Eclipse generates them according to one’s configuration. It is necessary to setup an update site Eclipse project, which contains feature projects that in turn reference plugin project.

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Geschrieben am Freitag, 31. August 2007 um 11:26 und ist zu finden in English, Java.Du kannst die Antworten zu diesem Thema verfolgen unter RSS 2.0 feed.Du kannst Antwort, oder trackback von deiner Seite.