Question

I do C++ embedded development for the NetBurner platform. They have plug-ins that customize Eclipse and in addition to a build tool-chain they add a Launch Group under the Run Configuration area. Everything was working fine under Indigo (32 bit) when I decided to install Subclipse (big mistake). As soon as the install finished I could no longer run my existing configurations successfully. When I went into the Run Configurations area I noticed the Launch Group I used to use was missing. Here is what it looked like earlier yesterday:

Here’s what it looks like today:

Things I’ve tried

1. First I uninstalled the Subclipse plugins using the
   Help->About->Installation Details and then selecting them one at a
   time, Uninstalling and restarting after each uninstall. No change.

2. Then I unpacked the original Eclipse Indigo/CDT 32 bit download to a
   fresh folder. Copied over the NetBurner plugins from the zip I got
   from the manufacturer. No change.

3. Launched with different Workspaces, no change.

4. Launched a Galileo version, it uses older plug-ins, and it still
   works.

5. Copied older plug-ins into Indigo, the older NetBurner launcher
   shows up (but it doesn’t really work with Indigo)

6. Removed the older plug-ins put in the newer ones, old NetBurner
   launcher went away new launcher does not show up.

7. Tried removing the
   {Workspace}.metadata.plugins\org.eclipse.debug.core.launches – no
   change.
   Interestingly even though launches has many .launch files that should show up under Run Configuration, nothing shows up.

One other strange (possibly relevant) thing is that icon for the NetBurner Perspective went away, now it just has <NetBurner> as the text and a generic perspective icon.

I can still cross-compile and build for the NetBurner (i.e. the build toolchain still works), it’s just the ability to use run configurations that seems to be missing.

I’m out of ideas, does anyone know of some global setting that sits outside the workspace and outside the Indigo installation folder that could be causing this?

I’m running on Win 7 64 bit ultimate, I run the 32 bit version of Indigo because the 64 bit doesn’t appear to work with the NetBurner plug-ins. I’ve also disabled the two Mylyn tasks under General->Startup and Shutdown (they seemed to cause many Permgen memory crashes). This is the same setup I had working flawlessly yesterday.

Update

I also noticed that only 3 of the 4plug-ins are showing up in the Installation Details plug-in pane. The nbeclipse.core_2.6.0.jar is in the eclipse plugin directory but not showing as loaded. So I guess I know now the problem is the plug-in isn’t loading but I don’t know why or how to get it to load, or what subclipse could have changed that would cause this.

Answer 1

I suspect that the Subclipse installation may have caused an update to some other plugin(s) that it depended on (keep in mind the transitive nature plugin dependency resolution; if you’re installing plugin A and it requires a certain version of Plugin B that you don’t have, Plugin B will be installed or updated to that version). In doing so, maybe the NetBurner plugin can no longer load because its declared dependencies are no longer met (ie, it depended on an earlier version and does not tolerate a later version).

You can use the OSGi Console to help determine why a plugin is not loading. Here are a couple of references that should help:

• http://grep.elasticpath.com/community/techblog/blog/2010/05/27/eclipse-plugins-and-the-osgi-console
• http://www.vogella.com/articles/OSGi/article.html#osgiconsole

By the way, you can not just copy plugins into an Eclipse installation and expect them to work. For several versions now, Eclipse has not supported that ability. You must use Help > Install New Software or File > Import > Install > From Existing Installation to install plugins. Ask the vendor if they have an update site to install from; like I said above, simply dropping things into Eclipse’s plugins folder is not supported any more, it won’t work. Other than the vendor providing an update site, the only other option is to use the dropins folder, as described here.