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How can I upgrade Eclipse from Indigo to Juno without losing all of my customizations?

I've tried two different things, neither of which worked:

  • Export prefs from Indigo and import into Juno
  • Run Juno on a copy of the Indigo workspace

It's so annoying to have to start from scratch with every upgrade...

Peter Mortensen
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G. Blake Meike
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    It looks as thought export/import prefs does update most preferences. There is another export/import in the "Available Software Sites" section that allows copying them. I don't see any way to preserve Perspectives or the list of known projects – G. Blake Meike Jun 09 '12 at 15:04
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    With customizations, do you mean, settings or plugins? I install juno separately, with the same workspaces for indigo and juno (I do it like this every time). The workspace settings make up 99% of all Eclipse settings, and are kept across the versions (it's strange, that they aren't with your copy of the Indigo workspace!). Of course, any extra plugins must be installed again, but I'm ok with these 5 minutes of work (I'm still dreaming though, that Eclipse updates/upgrades will someday be a lot faster, produce less errors, will be clearer for the user etc. Maybe a little bit more like Ubuntu.) – Chris Lercher Jul 28 '12 at 10:11

9 Answers9

90

I am no expert, but I just added new sites to my "Available Software Sites" (help -> install new software -> Available Software Sites)

http://download.eclipse.org/releases/juno

http://download.eclipse.org/tools/cdt/releases/juno

and updated (help -> install updates).

After the update

http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/4.2 had been added http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/3.7 had been disabled http://download.eclipse.org/tools/cdt/releases/indigo had been disabled

maybe other changes that I didn't notice.

Everything seems to work as expected - project list remains - perspectives remain - the only thing that wasn't preserved seemed to be the editor tabs that were open in the workspace, but that is small loss. So hopefully that was the right way to do it - unless someone wants to tell me differently.

Alan

AlanB
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  • I tried this but Eclipse doesn't find any updates... any clue what I'm missing? – Michi Jul 18 '12 at 08:07
  • Are you sure that you are using Indigo (`Eclipse` > `About Eclipse` > `Version: Indigo Release`) and that you have added **and enabled** the Juno site (`Eclipse` > `Preferences` > `Install/Update` > `Available Software Sites`)? If so, then I don't know what's going on. – Wolfram Jul 19 '12 at 10:30
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    I added the site but tried to do install and not the upgrade. It complained about lots of conflicts which I had to unselect and now my Eclipse is totally borked :( – Robin Elvin Jul 26 '12 at 11:43
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    This seems like a really good answer. The only problem is that once you do this, your previous version of Eclipse is gone. I use Eclipse mostly for Android dev and I'd like to be able to run both Juno and Indigo until I'm really sure that Juno's Android support is solid. – G. Blake Meike Jul 29 '12 at 14:34
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    Don't forget Eclipse is sandboxed so running two side by side is easy. Therefore just unpacking a zip in-place makes more sense than an installer, either using an exe in windows or a package manager in linux. That also means you can zip your current install up as a backup. – jambox Aug 10 '12 at 11:05
  • I tried this and it didn't work. Oddly, according to this, what you describe is not really possible: http://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php/t/366511/ – jambox Aug 10 '12 at 14:42
  • @G. Blake Meike The Android support on Juno is very solid. I've been using it since the middle of July without any issues, and it's a nice improvement over 3.X. – Ben Jakuben Aug 30 '12 at 14:16
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    Having some bad experience I would not recommend using multiple installations / versions of Eclipse. Despite of the in-detail instructions and suggestions. I ended up erasing everything and start from scratch. – gyorgyabraham Sep 11 '12 at 15:24
  • @gyabraham I have 3 seperate Eclipses and they all run fine. (Blackberry, android - indigo, and android - Juno) The only thing that might be an issue is if you are using the same workspace for all, and your required plugins dont match the requirement of the workspace. – IAmGroot Sep 28 '12 at 10:23
  • I tried Eclipse with PHP tooling, and another instance with Java tooling. I did deep RTFM about not mixing up configs/etc, but the PHP instance destroyed the code formatting capabilities of the Java instance. They never ran in parallel. Maybe it was my fault, of course. – gyorgyabraham Oct 01 '12 at 08:57
  • Worked like a charm except for a few minor problems with the perspectives. I'm using the AVR, PyDev, CDT, Git, XML Editor and Tools, WindowBuilder Pro and a couple of other plugins and all is working just fine. – rbaleksandar Jun 19 '13 at 05:28
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I followed the same way that AlanB described and had no problems upgrading from Indigo:

  1. Add the Juno Update Site and the update sites of other projects you are using (under Eclipse > Preferences > Available Software Sites)

  2. Select Help > Check for Updates

  3. Follow the update wizard (select everything you need, accept everything you have to)

  4. Restart Eclipse

Additional information:

FAQ entry in the eclipse.org wiki: "How do I upgrade Eclipse?"

Eclipse Juno (4.2) Readme (slightly more detailed): "Upgrading Workspace from a Previous Release"

Wolfram
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You guys are making this into a much bigger issue than it really is, Eclipse is designed to be portable, i.e. it doesn't need to be installed or store settings in the registry etc...

Upgrading and maintaining settings is as simple as downloading version Y and extracting it into the version X folder overwriting everything but the configuration folder. The new version configuration folder only has 2 or 3 generic files in it anyway until after the first time it is run. I've done this over the past 4 versions of Eclipse and never had a problem.

The only thing to keep in mind is that anything that's not included in whichever specialized version you're using may need to be upgraded, but that's simply a matter of clicking check for upgrades under help after running the new version for the first time.

Justin Buser
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    Actually I think this is the best answer. – jambox Aug 10 '12 at 14:41
  • This did work, bit it looks like some of my workspace settings didn't move over (such as my window positions in each perspective). Also, the eclipse.ini file has moved into the eclipse/ folder which didn't exist in 3.x (Indigo and prior) – scorpiodawg Sep 20 '12 at 01:06
  • I don't think this is a good solution, but is does provide insight useful to a solution: copying the workspace preserves the settings. In order to keep nearly all of your settings from indigo to juno, without breaking indigo, just copy the workspace directory and point Indigo at it. – G. Blake Meike Jan 22 '13 at 23:10
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@AlanB, that doesn't work for me, because the releases repo does not include the Eclipse SDK. Maybe the organization has changed since you upgraded.

I had to add the following repository: http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/4.2/ to the available software sites.

Even then check updates doesn't work. Have to go through the install new software path, select the above repo, and then it shows Eclipse SDK, Eclipse Platform SDK, etc. options. Have to select the correct option to upgrade depending on the current installation (i.e., if it was a platform or SDK, etc.)

Hope this helps someone.

CC

Cocoro Cara
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  • I'm having all the same problems, where non of the above suggestions work. This one gets me the furthest to upgrading to Juno but I can't get past the licensing. I hit accept but the next button does not unlock! – Jerinaw Aug 19 '12 at 13:13
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You can transfer most of your preferences by Export... > Preferences > Export all in your old installation and importing them into your new one.

thSoft
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2

EDIT: This is for Linux users

This link should help: http://blog.brunobraga.net/eclipse-42-in-ubuntu-1204

Essentially you just need to replace your /usr/lib/eclipse with a new download of the latest version, and that's really about it.

TheDorkKnight
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    The link you mentioned does not seem to have any talk of customization or preferences. – Lord Loh. Oct 14 '12 at 23:05
  • If you look in Justin Buser's post, you can see a little better explanation of how preferences work in eclipse; bascially, most of it is in your workspace, which is not part of what's being replaced in this method (ie. it'll just work, no need to migrate preferences at all). – TheDorkKnight Oct 14 '12 at 23:10
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You can import existing projects from a common root folder using

File > Import... > General > Existing Projects into Workspace

in addition to the preference transfer (as thSoft suggested):

File > Export... > General > Preferences > Export all
File > Import... > General > Preferences > Import all

mar10
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    You can also see how big a folder is by right clicking on it and selecting properties, however neither really have anything to do with his question. – Justin Buser Jul 28 '12 at 14:07
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You can use eclipse-perspective-share to migrate your perspectives.

My 2 cents.

Kassem
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Christophe
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The first and second answers didn't work for me.

I ended up downloading the most recent version of eclipse and import the workspace and configurations from the previous version.

I found this video helpful http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57vTrxFa3d4

João Quintas
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