Can't get eclipse to recognize my plugin

Question

I exported my eclipse plugin through the \"Export Wizard\" in the manifest and seems like everything went well (no errors). It created a .jar file within a plugin directory

Answer 1

Sometimes you just have to restart Eclipse. File -> Restart and try again. Worked for me because Eclipse was caching the results of my local update site.

Answer 2

In eclipse, go to your console window. From the drop down meny, select OSGI console. Run the command ss or ss <name of your plugin> You will then see the state of your plugin and a number. The state will probably be "installed" which means if has been found, but some dependencies were not satisfied.

Run the command diag <number of your plugin> and you will see why it wasn't started.

For more details, see Wheres my bundle

Edit: A first step to verify that the plugin is working would be to start up a new eclipse instance with your plugin. In the run configuration dialog, there is a tab with all the plugins that should be started. Make sure yours is checked and it will start with the new eclipse instance.

Answer 3

By far the most ellaborate descriptions of installing your plugin is provided by Vogella deployment of your plug-in

It covers all 3 possible ways in which you may install your plugin detailing the pros & cons of each of the following approaches :

1 . Installing your plug-in from your Eclipse IDE

2 . Export plug-in and put into dropins folder

3 . Create update site for your plug-in

Answer 4

If you are using Eclipse 3.4 or above, put your plugin in the 'dropins' directory.

To install via Help->Install new software you need to create an 'Update site' or a 'p2 repository'.