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Eclipse plugin installation

Introduction

This document provides instructions for installating of the two Eclipse plugins provided by Axis2 (Service Archive Generator and Code Generator Wizard). The two plugins should work on Eclipse version 3.1 and upwards, and require at least Java 1.5. The plugins have dependencies on bundles that are installed by default in the Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers edition, but not in the Eclipse IDE for Java Developers edition. It is therefore recommended to use the EE edition. The installation procedure is the same for both plugins, but depends on the Eclipse version being used. To determine which procedure to use, check if there is a dropins folder in the Eclipse installation directory. This folder is used by the p2 provisioning system introduced in recent Eclipse version. It should be present starting with Eclipse version 3.4.

Installation using the dropins directory

If your Eclipse version uses p2, use the following procedure to install the Axis2 plugins:

  1. Download the ZIP file for the plugin you want to install.

  2. Extract the content of the plugins folder in the ZIP archive into the dropins folder (i.e. do not create a plugins folder under dropins).

As explained here, it is possible to use other directory layouts in the dropins folder.

Installation on older Eclipse versions

If you have an older Eclipse version that doesn't support p2 yet, use the following procedure to install the Axis2 plugins:

  1. Download the ZIP file for the plugin you want to install.

  2. Extract the content of the ZIP archive into the Eclipse installation directory. This should add one or more JAR files and/or directories to the existing plugins folder.

Debugging

If a plugin doesn't show up in the Eclipse UI, use the following debugging procedure:

  1. Start Eclipse with the -console option.

  2. In the console, use ss axis2 to check if the plugin has been installed and to identify its bundle ID.

  3. If the plugin has not been installed, use the install command (with a file: URL pointing to the plugin) to force its installation.

  4. Use the start command (with the bundle ID as argument) to attempt to start the bundle. If the plugin doesn't show up in the UI, then this command will typically fail with an error message explaining the reason.

Please use this procedure before opening a bug report.