How to remove old versions of Eclipse plugins?

Question

After update, old Eclipse plugins remain in \"plugins\" folder (there are also leftovers in \"features\" folder).

Is there a way to remove those automatically?

Answer 1

I use the following command:

eclipse -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.garbagecollector.application -profile epp.package.jee

Notes:

1. This is documented in Equinox/p2/FAQ, see "Why aren't bundles being removed when their associated feature has been removed?"

   The FAQ answer references an Eclipse Community Forum thread "Plug-in jar remains after feature uninstall" (June 2010) as the origin for this recipe.

   The recipe is still valid nowadays, with Eclipse 4.8 Photon.

2. The -profile argument depends on what packaging of Eclipse IDE you are using. The above one (epp.package.jee) is for "Eclipse for Java EE Developers". I found it in the file configuration/config.ini. The relevant line there is the following:

   eclipse.p2.profile=epp.package.jee