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Uninstalling plugins from Eclipse 3.6 (Helios)

Submitted by Druss on Sat, 2011-03-19 01:56

I had to do a clean install of Eclipse today and found myself stuck with a dodgy plug-in (subversive). However, when I went to the Help menu, I did not find any option to uninstall software. IIRC, there was something along the lines of Manage configuration here where you could go to makes changes and uninstall plug-ins.

The only thing relevant in the Help menu was Check for updates and Install new software. Clicking the former immediately checked for updates and offered no other options. However the latter did offer a dialog box and there it was, sequestered towards the right hand bottom corner: an inconspicuous hyperlinked What is already installed? option which when clicked brought up a new dialog box with a host of new options. Under the Installed software tab was a list of all installed plug-ins and buttons below offering to update, uninstall or list properties of any selected plug-ins. Once located, uninstalling my offending plug-in was a breeze.

I don't know what the UI/UX/USUCK team were thinking when they came up with this gem. I expect that they have some warped reasoning - "we do not want you uninstalling plug-ins" oslt - behind the decision. But I fail to see any logic behind it.

Comments

You are not the only one who is massively confused by this. I've seen at least one other site where they complain about this.

I still haven't figured it out though, because my plugin is not listed in the "Installed Software" tab. Instead, it's listed under the "Plug-ins" tab. The latter does not have an install button. Clicking on the plug-in (double, and right) does seem to do anything.

I'm pretty sure they do not have a UI person designing this. It's completely unusable!

Under Windows 7 you need to run eclipse as administrator for the Uninstall button to be available.