Move Plugins between different Eclipse versions

I need to install several plugins to an eclipse that is running on a remote 64bit Linux machine.

I tried copying the neccesary plugins to the plugins and feature folder on the remote machine but it did not seem to work.

The approach I wanted to try out now was setting up a new Eclipse installation with all plugins and replacing the whole eclipse folder.

But as I am doing this I realized that I have to use a 32 bit Linux and Eclipse. Is it possible to install 32bit Eclipse and just move the plugins and features to the remote machine? Do I need to consider other things? Can you recommend any other approach that would help me?

UPDATE: The problem is that I cannot just start eclipse on the remote machine. I can access it via ssh but not run eclipse and install plugins via the wizards. I also have no 64bit linux to prepare a complete eclipse that I can simply copy. So what I meant is that I have to prepare either an eclipse installation or maybe just plugin folder and move that from my 32bit architecture to the 64bit one.

I can download the current eclipse folder but I can开发者_运维百科not run it. When I try to start it with ubuntu nothing happens. I believe it is because its a 64bit version and I got 32 bit architecture.

Don't do this. Not only are there are a number of plugins with native-compiled fragments (different for 32-bit vs 64-bit), but in recent versions, Eclipse will not even register features and plugins that are simply dropped in. You should install plugins explicitly unless you are moving the entire installation between machines with compatible architectures.

You can't run a 64bit binary on a 32bit system without some kind of virtualization software that does a complete CPU emulation. VMWare, VirtualPC, etc... don't do this. They virtualize the system, but not the CPU.

The other way around: a 32bit binary on a 64bit cpu, is generally possible, if the OS (and processor) supports such things.

I think this is feasible.

The architecture should not be the problem. Unless the plugins contain DLLs or .so libraries invoked through JNI but there are very few examples (swt is one example but there are very few of them).

As a matter of fact, the reason why you have OS/arch/GUI specific versions of eclipse is not the java code but the native launcher (eclipse.exe on windows and SWT), all the rest can go bck and forth from one machine to the other, regardless of the arch, the os or the wondows manager.

However, dropping jars in the plugin directory of eclipse is not the recommended way of installing plugins any more (since 3.3 ?). It might work but there is no guarantee.

To install the missing plugins you should download them from eclipse itself (help => install new software...). If you tell us the specific plugins you have problem with, we might be able to help you more precisely.

The best way to go forward is to list all the plugins on the source machine (either from eclipse (help => about) and look at names having specific hints at arch/os/gui. All these cannot be copied over. All the rest should be safe. As I said, beware of swt. Subclipse has a JNI dependent configuration if you decide to use JavaHL. And there are also "false" plugins such as xmlSpy etc who are noting more than JNI adapters but these are not mainstream.