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

Instead of sorting, etc. the solutions should be based on the contents of bundles.info.

Manual solution:

• create a copy of eclipse/configuration/org.eclipse.equinox.simpleconfigurator/bundles.info
• edit
• search for regular expression: .*plugins/([^,]*),.*, replace with: $1 (e.g. using Notepad++)
• go to eclipse/plugin/
• select files and folders listed in this new file (e.g. in Total Commander: Mark > Load Selection From File)
• invert selection
• delete/move selected files and folders

Answer 2

I also want to remove old plugins, but still found no answer today, so I wrote a quick and dirty script guess-old-eclipse-plugins.sh to handle old plugins.

This script will scan plugins directory under Eclipse directory. and will generate a remove-old-eclipse-plugins.txt file which can be used to remove old plugins.

This script is tested under Cygwin 1.7.15 on Windows XP.

guess-old-eclipse-plugins.sh

PluginsDir=plugins
FeaturesDir=features
PluginIDSeparator=_
RemovingScriptFileName=remove-old-eclipse-plugins.txt
rm -rf $RemovingScriptFileName

#for dir in $PluginsDir $FeaturesDir
for dir in $PluginsDir  # $FeaturesDir: most file names in features dir contains more than 1 _ character
do
    echo "Processing [$dir] directory..."
    # split PluginID from filename
    # (not reliable, but general working. (ex: will get one junit PluginID because there're move than 1 _ characters in file name))
    file_list=$(ls $dir);
    echo "$file_list" | cut -f1 -d $PluginIDSeparator         > $dir-all.txt
    echo "$file_list" | cut -f1 -d $PluginIDSeparator  | uniq > $dir-uniq.txt

    # get the PluginList which VERY POSSIBLY has old versions
    diff_result=$(diff -U 0 $dir-uniq.txt $dir-all.txt)
    plugins_which_has_old_versions=$(echo "$diff_result" | grep -e "^+[^+]" | cut -f 2 -d +)

    #
    for p in $(echo "$plugins_which_has_old_versions")
    do
        echo "$p"
        i=0
        for f in $(ls -d -t $dir/$p$PluginIDSeparator*) # use 'ls' command, can sort result by file time, but can not handle file name contains special characters (white space) when using wildcard
        #for f in $(find $dir -name "$p$PluginIDSeparator*")    # use 'find' command
        do
            if [ -d $f ]
            then
                # should use rm -rf
                echo -n "[D]"
            else
                echo -n "   "
            fi
            echo -n "$f"

            ((i++))
            if [ $i -eq 1 ]
            then
                echo ""
                continue    # first file, the newest version
            fi
            echo "    [old]"
            echo "rm -rf $f" >> $RemovingScriptFileName
        done

        echo
    done
done

IMPORTANT NOTICE

Before use the generated remove-old-eclipse-plugins.txt file to remove plugins, make sure all the listed plugins in it are REALLY old plugins. Because, this script can't handle file name contains more than 1 _ characters. For example: JUnit v3 and v4 plugins are 2 different plugins, but the script will treat it as same plugins because these 2 file names use same org.junit_ prefix.

org.junit
[D]plugins/org.junit_3.8.2.v3_8_2_v20100427-1100
[D]plugins/org.junit_4.8.2.v4_8_2_v20110321-1705    [old]  <-- wrong

So, use it VERY CAREFULLY, remove the wrong part before use it, or your Eclipse IDE may not work properly.

Sample output

$ ./guess-old-eclipse-plugins.sh
Processing [plugins] directory...
org.eclipse.gef
   plugins/org.eclipse.gef_3.7.2.v20111106-2020.jar
   plugins/org.eclipse.gef_3.6.2.v20110110-2020.jar    [old]

org.eclipse.help.base
   plugins/org.eclipse.help.base_3.6.2.v201202080800.jar
   plugins/org.eclipse.help.base_3.5.3.v201102101200.jar    [old]

org.eclipse.help.ui
   plugins/org.eclipse.help.ui_3.5.101.r37_20110819.jar
   plugins/org.eclipse.help.ui_3.5.3.r36_20101116.jar    [old]
...

Sample generated script

rm -rf plugins/org.eclipse.gef_3.6.2.v20110110-2020.jar
rm -rf plugins/org.eclipse.help.base_3.5.3.v201102101200.jar
rm -rf plugins/org.eclipse.help.ui_3.5.3.r36_20101116.jar
rm -rf plugins/org.eclipse.help.webapp_3.5.3.r36_20101130.jar
rm -rf plugins/org.eclipse.jdt.apt.core_3.3.402.R36_v20110120-1000.jar
rm -rf plugins/org.eclipse.jdt.debug.ui_3.5.2.v20100928a_r362.jar

Answer 3

To get rid of the old plugins you have to clear the Installation History. Go to Help | About Eclipse | Installation Details | Installation History and select all the old stuff. Then click delete and restart. Voila. This works with Eclipse Helios (3.6)

Answer 4

Removing old plugins is always a hassle. Especially when you upgrade and your Eclipse just doesn't want to start again and you need to figure it out via the metadata hell of plugins dependencies.

I've seen that couple of you tried to fix this via a script.

Eclipse Plugin Cleaner

Well I have created a java based tool (with tests, build by maven & hosted at github, so you are free to fork it) that checks for duplicities of plugins by introspecting manifest files (or file names if the manifest is incomplete or corrupted).

Now

you can quite easily for example download the latest Eclipse and put your old Eclipse into dropins/eclipse folder and the tool will clean up the dropins folder - thus your new bundles are preserved and old one are deleted (The dropins folder is prefered for deletion if 2 or more same versions are found).

More information about the Eclipse Plugin Cleaner can be found at https://github.com/azachar/eclipse-plugin-cleaner

Answer 5

For me this works:

eclipse -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.garbagecollector.application -profile SDKProfile

Tested Eclipse v4.9. Removes old version of my plugins. The profile epp.package.jee mentioned in other solutions returns "not existing" for me.

Answer 6

For STM32CubeIDE, a popular Eclipse-based IDE for the STM32 microcontroller-family, this command did clean-up old plugin versions under Windows 10:

"C:\ST\STM32CubeIDE_1.3.0\STM32CubeIDE\eclipsec" -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.garbagecollector.application -profile STM32CubeIDE