How to update Eclipse from 3.4 (Ganymede) to 3.5 (Galileo)?

Question

I've got my Eclipse 3.4 envirnoment set up nice and cozy the way I like it. Took me some time too, to find all the plugins (Mylin, PDT, Subclipse), set all the settings, etc. Now I see that some of the plugins (like PDT) only support 3.5 in their latest versions.

Is it possible to update from 3.4 to 3.5? I'd hate to do it all again.

I read in some mailing list where they noted that it's possible, but the conversation trailed off in another direction. Google wasn't much help, and Eclipse's documentation either.

Answer 1

All of your settings are actually stored as part of your workspace. So you could do a fresh install of the latest version of Eclipse, add the extra plugins that you want (many of which will have newer versions for Eclipse 3.5) and when you launch, just make sure you point to your old workspace.

Answer 2

This is what I did.

1.- My workspace was in c:\Users\me\workspace. I copied this folder to c:\users\me\eclipse\workspace-3.4 and to c:\users\me\eclipse\workspace-3.5 So now I have twice the same, just with different names.

2.- Extracted "eclipse-SDK-3.5-win32.zip" to "C:\program files\eclipse-SDK-3.5-win32"

3.- Run Eclipse 3.4 and changed the workspace from "c:\Users\me\workspace" to "c:\users\me\eclipse\workspace-3.4". Then I closed Eclipse.

4.- Run Eclipse 3.5 and selected "c:\users\me\eclipse\workspace-3.5" as the workspace location (you can also use the '-data' argument I think)

5.- Downloaded and installed the PDT plugin (I develop in PHP).

And "Voila", now I'm able to run Eclipse 3.4 and 3.5.

BTW, even if I had to install the PDT plug in, I didn't had to touch the configuration. It took the former one from the workspace folder.

There is some information at help.eclipse.org/galileo/index.jsp, look in Workbench User Guide\Tasks\Upgrading Eclipse.

Answer 3

Help -> Software Updates... -> Available Software tab -> Add Site...

Enter the update site for the Galileo (3.5) release train: http://download.eclipse.org/releases/galileo

Now go back to the Installed Software tab and click the Update... button. After some computation you should be presented with a list of available updates (or some cryptic errors about how your current environment cannot be updated due to compatibility issues).