How to install list of eclipse plugins from a script?

Question

I need a way to setup a highly customized eclipse coding environment in a fully unattended way from a script in linux. The customized eclipse environment requires the installation of about 10 different plugins from various sources (protobuf, pydev, cmakeed, openinterminal, egit, yaml, webpageeditor, etc). Doing this manually each time with the gui takes 20-30 minutes. I want to automate the install of plugins in a script so anyone running linux can recreate my eclipse environment with a custom set of plugins without human interaction. Anyone have advice about how to do this?

Answer 1

Here are the command line snippets to install some of my favorite plugins (tested on Eclipse Indigo 3.7)... The trick is to figure out the value of the "installIU" parameter for the package... The Eclipse GUI will show this if you click on "more" link when the desired package is selected in the installer window.

cmakeed - CMake editor

eclipse -nosplash -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director -repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo/,http://cmakeed.sourceforge.net/eclipse/ -installIU com.cthing.cmakeed.feature.feature.group

OpenInTerminal - Add option in context menu

eclipse -nosplash -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director -repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo/,http://eclipse-openinterminal.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/site/ -installIU OpenInTerminal.feature.group

protobuf-dt - Google Protobuffer editor

eclipse -nosplash -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director -repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo/,http://download.eclipse.org/modeling/tmf/xtext/updates/composite/releases/,http://protobuf-dt.googlecode.com/git/update-site -installIU com.google.eclipse.protobuf.feature.group

yedit - YAML Editor

eclipse -nosplash -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director -repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo/,http://dadacoalition.org/yedit -installIU org.dadacoalition.yedit.feature.group

shelled - Bash Script Editor

eclipse -nosplash -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director -repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo/,http://download.eclipse.org/technology/dltk/updates/,https://sourceforge.net/projects/shelled/files/shelled/update/ -installIU net.sourceforge.shelled.feature.group

Web Page Editor

eclipse -nosplash -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director -repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo/ -installIU org.eclipse.jst.webpageeditor.feature.feature.group

Pydev
Pydev is tricky because it requires installing a certificate first... Here's a script that automates that step:

#!/usr/bin/python
# Add PyDev's certificate to Java's key and certificate database
# Certificate file here: http://pydev.org/pydev_certificate.cer
import os, sys, pexpect, urllib2
def main():
  # NOTE: You may have to update the path to your system's cacerts file
  certs_file = '/usr/lib/jvm/default-java/jre/lib/security/cacerts'  
  pydev_certs_url = 'http://pydev.org/pydev_certificate.cer'
  print "Adding pydev_certificate.cer to %s" % (certs_file)
  pydev_cert = open('pydev_certificate.cer', 'w')
  pydev_cert.write(urllib2.urlopen(pydev_certs_url).read())
  pydev_cert.close()
  cmd = "keytool -import -file ./pydev_certificate.cer -keystore %s" % (certs_file)
  child = pexpect.spawn(cmd)
  child.expect("Enter keystore password:")
  child.sendline("changeit")
  if child.expect(["Trust this certificate?", "already exists"]) == 0:
    child.sendline("yes")
  try:
    child.interact()
  except OSError:
    pass  
  print "done"

if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

Then you can run:

eclipse -nosplash -application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director -repository http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo/,http://pydev.org/updates/ -installIU org.python.pydev.feature.feature.group