Question

I haven’t found one to install Eclipse 4.2 Juno. Default Ubuntu repositories (I’m using Ubuntu 10.04) suggest me the archaic Galileo version. And I found the Eclipse’s page on Launchpad which was updated in 2009.

I can, of course, simply download the archive with all the files from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/, but that’s not Debian way, is it? I mean, no automatic updates and other aptitude-managed cool things.

So, is there any repository that maintains the most recent version of Eclipse?

Answer 1

I think it is unlikely that you will find a newer package for Lucid. People tend to create packages for newer versions of Ubuntu.

If it’s not possible to upgrade Ubuntu, what you could try is to make your own package but you would still not get automatic upgrades. From a quick look, it looks like that Juno needs some libraries to build that could be newer than the versions you have in your system, so this may end up being quite difficult. It could possibly be the reason why it is not available for Lucid in the first place.

If Juno works in your system, the quick and dirty solution is to first create a temporary folder, e.g. eclipse_3.8.0 and then do the following:

mkdir /path/to/eclipse_3.8.0/DEBIAN
mkdir /path/to/eclipse_3.8.0/opt
tar xzvf eclipse-juno.tar.gz -C /path/to/eclipse_3.8.0/opt
dpkg-deb -b --no-check /path/to/eclipse_3.8.0

This will create a deb package that installs eclipse in /opt/eclipse. You may want to put a control file inside the DEBIAN folder to add a description, dependencies, etc.

If you still want to give building a try, from the official ubuntu launchpad page for eclipse you can download the source files and especially the control files stored in the xxx.debian.tar.gz file. Take a look at the Debian wiki for some tips on how to build. Precise has the Indigo SR2 version and Quantal seems to have Juno.