How to move from Eclipse Carbon to Cocoa 64-bit?

Question

I'm using Eclipse Carbon now and I have some installed Plugins. How to move to Eclipse Cocoa 64-bit without losing the plugins and settings??

Answer 1

Settings:

• Workspace settings are kept automatically, if you reuse the same workspace. I'd do a backup of the workspace first, because sometimes a different Eclipse version can mess up your workspace - in this case, where you just switch from Carbon to Cocoa, it's not very likely though.
• Eclipse preferences: You can export/import preferences via File > Export... > General/Preferences (similar for import)

Plugins:

I haven't found the ideal way how to do this myself. One thing you could try, is to determine the plugins in the old plugins folder (plugins can exist either as jars, or as subfolders), plus the corresponding features, and copy them over into your new installation's dropins folder. See http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox_p2_Getting_Started . Make sure, that you don't have any carbon specific plugins (usually identified by "carbon" somewhere in their name). Otherwise, you'll have to do a fresh install of the plugins anyway.

Answer 2

You can install the plugins from the Carbon installation to the new, Cocoa64 installation using P2, just add a local update site to the following folder:

«old eclipse installation»/eclipse/p2/org.eclipse.equinox.p2.engine/profileRegistry/SDKProfile.profile/

For details see:

• http://www.peterfriese.de/following-eclipse-milestones/

Otherwise I second chris_l's comment, that the workspace and preferences can be reused (and AFAIK preferences are stored in the workspace, so just pointing the new installation - after the plugin install - to the old workspace location).