It seems to me from the following page
http://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/platform-team/target.php
and other pages like it. that there has been a robust, mature, properly integrated (and seemingly very smart) way to upload and synchronize files from an eclipse workspace with an FTP site for four to six years already.
It seams from that page and similar pages around the web that “The WebDAV and FTP plugins are built as part of the platform build” which to me in plain english would mean that if you have the core eclipse files you should already have it.
This is obviously not the case. you dont even have the plugins required to make basic ftp access unless you install it from a repository.
Not only is it not installed. it is not available from the default plugin repositries set up when you download eclipse.
Not only that but I could not even find the link to the repository anywhere.
RSE – which seams like a library out of the nineties with such limited functionality that shell clients writen for windows 3.1 could do more in less steps – has its plugin repository url posted in many places. but the team plugin has only links to CVS repositories of the source at best. even most of those are broken.
In conclusion.
Does anyone know how to install the “team” ftp client so that I can synchronize my content with FTP?
Ok, time for me to answer my own question.
No RSE does not do what org.eclipse.team.ftp was able to accomplish five years ago. Somehow that functionality never made it in. I have no idea why they dropped a perfectly logical solution in favor of the new backwards methodology.
However, visiting the site that @bmargulies recommended I realized that Jcraft still hosts the original FTP and WebDav Service for Team Services (upon which their sftp service is built)
So you can just point your eclipse install dialog at http://eclipse.jcraft.com/ and install the original plugin.
Good luck