Time to upgrade: Eclipse PDT 2.1 based on Galileo is out

Eclipse PDT 2.1 is based on Eclipse 3.5 (Galileo release). That release also includes Mylyn, a tool that helps you organize the to do list in conjunction with the bug reports in Trac and other bug tracking tools. I've never tried it before, but it sounds very interesting.

New all-in-one packages now include one for 64bit Linux and one for Mac OS X Cocoa.

With a new version comes also the question of upgrading. This post intends to share one potential way to do the upgrade.

AFAIK, Eclipse can't upgrade itself via the update installer. And a jump in Eclipse release (e.g. from 3.3 to 3.4) normally also means that your previous plug-ins no longer work - sort of the same as between Drupal 5 and Drupal 6. I'm not sure however if that's the case for 3.4 to 3.5.

I'm describing now what worked best for me to upgrade from one PDT version to another:

1. Download the all-in-one package from http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/downloads (it's too much of a hassle to chase down all dependencies)
2. Unzip to a directory of your choice, but not the same directory as the old version
3. Start the previous version and export your preferences via the File - Export menu, "General" folder
4. Close the previous version.
5. Execute eclipse.exe of the new version
6. When you are asked about a workspace, use a new one (I keep one workspace per PDT version)
7. If you had any additional plug-ins, install them via their update site url if they have any
8. Import the previously exported settings via File - Import menu, "General" folder (the changes are only visible after a restart of Eclipse)
9. Close Eclipse
10. Install the plug-ins that did not have an update site
11. Start the new Eclipse version
12. Import you existing projects from the previous version's workspace into the current workspace via the File - Import menu, "General" folder, "Existing projects into workspace"; make sure you tick the checkbox "Copy projects into workspace"; this leaves you with a backup copy of your previous PDT environment.
13. It can happen that plug-ins that you no longer have installed leave "ghost" perspectives behind. You can delete them in the Window - Preferences menu, under General - Perspectives.

Hope this works for you,
Gerald