Correct way to remove plugin from Eclipse

Last times, I'm facing problem of removing plugins from Eclipse.

symptoms:

1. if removing thru already installed menu,that can't reinstall correctly and have several perspectives - e.g. for SQL Explorer. (in Open Perspective menu)

2. if removing thru file system - manually from plugins directory,that I'm not certain about what .jars should I remove

The question is, what are the steps that guarantee correct full removing of plugin and what is better, manual or automatic removing?

Share,please,your experience.

Using the menus, open

• Help | About Eclipse IDE | Installation details (in newer versions),
• Help | Installation Details (in older versions), or
• Help | About Eclipse | Installation details (in even older versions).

In the "Installed software" tab click on the software that you wish to uninstall, then click the "Uninstall..." button below.

If you installed the plug-in by dropping into the dropins folder, then just delete it from the dropins folder and restart Eclipse.

See the answer of @Cogentleman for more recent versions of Eclipse.

I would like to propose my solution,that worked for me.

It's reverting Eclipse and its plugins versions, to the version just before the plugin was installed.

Eclipse Photon user here, found it under the toolbar's Windows > Preferences > Install/Update > "Uninstall or update" link > Click stuff and hit the "Uninstall" button.

I'm using Eclipse Kepler release. There is no Installation Details or About Eclipse menu item under help. For me, it was Help | Eclipse Marketplace...

I had to click on the "Installed" tab. The plug-in I wanted to remove was listed there, with an "Uninstall" option.

• For Windows: Go to Help > About Eclipse > Installation Details , select the software you no longer want, and click Uninstall.
• On Macintosh: Go to Eclipse > About Eclipse > Installation Details.
• In older versions: You might need go to Help > Software Updates > Manage Configuration. Select the plugin to Uninstall, and disable it with the task shown in the right window.

There are few things to keep in mind:

• 'Uninstalling' a feature, using the steps above, disable the feature or plug-in.

• They are still available on disk, and they can be enabled at any time in the future.

• Completely removing a Plugin from the system requires a manual process that should be done when Eclipse is not running.

• In order to do this, If you are removing a feature you will have to manually remove the files there associated with the feature from the eclipse/features directory and its plug-ins from the eclipse/plugins directory.

• If you are removing a plugin you will have to manually remove the files there associated with the plugin from the eclipse/plugins directory.

From the FAQ of Eclipse:

> Be very cautious as to which files you delete, and always have a backup of your Eclipse directory. If you remove the wrong files from these directories, you may have quite some trouble restoring your Eclipse to a stable state. Therefore, unless your hard disk storage capacity is extraordinarily limited, it is recommended that you simply leave the physical files in place. > - Note that when manually removing plugins as described above, it is likely that some metadata will still cached by Eclipse. This can lead to problems later on. Running Eclipse with the -clean option may help with that, as it causes Eclipse to clean the cached metadata. See the Running Eclipse help page for details about this option.

Correct way to remove install plug-in from Eclipse/STS :

Go to install folder of eclipse ----> plugin --> select required plugin and remove it.

Step 1

E:\springsource\sts-3.4.0.RELEASE\plugins

Step 2

select and remove related plugins jars.

Inspired by sergionni's answer, I ended up doing the following steps:

Help --> Installation Details --> Installation History tab

In the Previous configurations table, you can select a configuration and see in the Configuration contents exactly which plugins were installed and are included in it.

It's easy to find the configuration that contains the plugin you want to remove, using the Compare button. This button is enabled when two configurations are selected.

After tracking the configuration that's responsible for that plugin, select the previous configuration and press the Revert button.

Note that if you revert to a configuration that isn't the one just right before the Current Installation, it causes any other plugins that were installed since, to be uninstalled as well.

Help --> About Eclipse --> Installation Details --> select whatever you want to uninstall from "Installed Software" tab.

While Help → About Eclipse IDE [or wherever it was in the past or will be in the future] → Installation Details → Installed Software → Uninstall... is the official and preferred way there are features/plugins the latter button of which is disabled.

Remember also that there aren't only plugins but features too. In my case I wanted to remove Mylyn and Wild Web Developer from a rather fresh Eclipse IDE for Enterprise Java and Web Developers package. I did the following.

But first a:

DISCLAIMER
Enter ECLIPSE_HOME at your own risk. Mistakes like typos might be in the following, too. I take no responsibility for whatsoever.

• Created the directories features.DISABLED and plugins.DISABLED in Eclipse's home dir.
• Moved *mylyn* from ECLIPSE_HOME/features to ECLIPSE_HOME/features.DISABLED
• Moved *wildwebdeveloper* from ECLIPSE_HOME/features to ECLIPSE_HOME/features.DISABLED
• Moved *mylyn* from ECLIPSE_HOME/plugins to ECLIPSE_HOME/plugins.DISABLED
• Moved *wildwebdeveloper* from ECLIPSE_HOME/plugins to ECLIPSE_HOME/plugins.DISABLED

After starting Eclipse there were about a dozen "not found" errors in Eclipse's Error Log view. If you double-click on each of them you can see which dependency plugin JAR(s) haven't been found.

• Set the Error Log view's filter to just display errors and warnings.
• Moved the dependency plugin *.jars mentioned in the errors from ECLIPSE_HOME/plugins.DISABLED back to ECLIPSE_HOME/plugins one by one (with Eclipse restart after each) until no "not found" error appeared in the view any longer. It were nine *mylyn*.jars in the end.:

*.mylyn.commons.core_*
*.mylyn.commons.net_*
*.mylyn.commons.notifications.core_*
*.mylyn.commons.notifications.ui_*
*.mylyn.commons.screenshots.ui_*
*.mylyn.commons.ui_*
*.mylyn.commons.workbench_*
*.mylyn.commons.wikitext.markdown_*
*.mylyn.commons.wikitext.*

Note that this applies to a rather fresh Eclipse 2021-03 (4.19.0) installation. It might be different from one – even patch – version to the other.

Furthermore:

• Keep Eclipse's Error Log view open for a while. The underlying OSGi activates bundles (plugins) on the fly if they are referenced from an other bundle (plugin) for the first time. And if one isn't there then...

• Check the Error Log view especially after installing new features/plugins. They might rely on plugins/JARs you moved to .DISABLED. If that's the case move the according JAR(s) back to ECLIPSE_HOME/plugins and/or ECLIPSE_HOME/features.

• If something doesn't work as it did in the past once in the future remember what you did and ... → Error Log view.

For some 'Eclipse Marketplace' plugins Uninstall may not work. (Ex: SonarLint v5)

So Try,

Help -> About Eclipse -> Installation details

• search the plugin name in 'Installed Software'

• Select plugin name and Uninstall it

Additional Detail

To fix plugin errors, after the uninstall revert back older version of plugin,

Help -> install new software..

• Get plugin url from Google search and Add it (Example: https://eclipse-uc.sonarlint.org)

• Select and install older versions of the Plugin. This will fix most of the plugin problems.