Installing a plain plugin jar in Eclipse 3.5

Question

Since Eclipse 3.5 there seems to be no option to have drop a plugin jar ( not a feature ) in the Eclipse base directory and have it picked up at next startup.

Is the

Answer 1

This is how you can go about it:

1. Close Eclipse
2. Download a jar plugin (let's assume its testNG.jar)
3. Copy testNG.jar to a certain folder (say C:\Project\resources\plugins)
4. In your Eclipse installation folder, there is a folder named dropins (could be C:\eclipse\dropins), create a .link file in that folder, (like plugins.link)
5. Open this file with any text editor and enter this one line:
   path=C:/Project/resources/plugins
   
6. Save the file and start Eclipse.

And you are good to go!

Please do not forget to change your backward slashes in your plugins folder path to forward slashes on step 5. I used to forget and it would take my time unnecessarily.