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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-04T22:54:04+00:00

What could cause Eclipse to ignore plugins in the dropins catalog? I’ve created a

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What could cause Eclipse to ignore plugins in the dropins catalog?

I’ve created a dummyplugin based on the Eclipse wizard, exported it to a jar. When dropping it into the drop-ins catalog of a fresh Eclipse installation, it works fine.

When I do the same thing but on a custom Eclipse installation, it doesn’t work. The plugin doesn’t even show up in the plugin registry view. No error messages or anything like that.

I’ve tried:

  • Running with -clean
  • Running with -clean -consoleLog but no errors were printed
  • Starting up with -console, and checking if the plugin is seen with the command ss, no luck.
  • Running with -Dorg.eclipse.equinox.p2.reconciler.dropins.directory=C:\Program\Eclipse\eclipse3.6\dropins\
  • Changing name of the eclipse catalog from eclipse3.6 to eclipse, in case I had run into a variation of an Eclipse bug
  • It’s not due to dependency issues (like this question), since the plugin isn’t even found
  • Update Copied the eclipse.ini from the working eclipse installation to the custom one, with the same result; The plugin wasn’t found. So the issue isn’t in the ini file
  • Update Thought the issue might be some rights issue, since I my user wasn’t the owner of the custom installation. So I made a copy of the entire dir of the custom installation to make sure I was the owner with full rights. No change
  • Update Starting with a new workspace doesn’t make any difference

Is it possible to define that Eclipse should ignore the dropins catalog? How?

The custom version of Eclipse defines a lot of variables, but nothing that seems related to p2 or the behaviour of dropins.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The dropins/ folder is a best effort, totally optional, silently failing legacy leftover. Not big on the diagnostics, as you’ve found.

    If you use the director to install your bundle into your custom eclipse, at least you’ll be able to get an error message that will tell you what the problem is.

    I’d suggest exporting your jar with some minimal p2 metadata.

    Then you use something like:

    eclipse/eclipse \
-application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director \
-noSplash \
-repository \
file://$HOME/eclipseUpdate \
-installIUs \
org.dojotoolkit/1.6.1.v201105210659

    If p2 can’t find some dependency, it should spew out the confusing error messages it can generate.

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