Upgrading from Eclipse Galileo to Helios

Question

Whats the best way to upgrade from Galileo to Helios whilst still preserving my settings and plugins?

Thanks

Answer 1

The surest path to upgrade is to make a "parallel" installation: an Helios Eclipse beside the Galileo one you already have.

Regarding your settings, you just need to reference the same workspace.
In your eclipse.ini, indicate where your workspace is, and you will get back all your projects, workspaces and perspectives just as you left them.

Plugins are trickier, and I would recommend:

• adding to your eclipse.ini a shared dropins directory reference
• copying the extra plugins from your Galileo installation to that shared dropins one.
  See How to copy plugins between two eclipses

In your shared dropins path, you will have:

   my-eclipse-galileo-plugins
     eclipse
       features
       plugins

and you will copy all extra plugins and features added since the installation of your Eclipse Galileo instance:

   /path/to/galileo
     eclipse
       features
       plugins

Answer 2

The method above did not work for me on one of my 3 boxes. I had the usual dependency issue that Eclipse gets so wrong so often.

What worked for me on my second Ubuntu box was Method 2 found in this article: http://crlog.info/2011/06/30/upgrading-eclipse-on-ubuntu-from-3-5-to-3-7-indigo-works-for-other-versions-too/

Method 1 from the article worked on my Windows and one of my Ubuntu boxes, but Method 2 was required for the other Ubuntu box.

Answer 3

Note, to upgrade from Galileo to Helios (3.6), you first need to add the Helios software repository as follows:

1. Window > Preferences > Install/Update > Available Software Sites
2. Click 'Add'
3. Enter URL: http://download.eclipse.org/releases/helios
4. Click 'Ok'

From here