Eclipse - keeping several installations in sync

Question

Is it possible to have several installations of Eclipse (with required plugins installed) in sync? If so, what would be the preferred approach?

I am looking for a way to keep Eclipse installations (one on desktop - Wind7 64 bit, another on laptop Win7 64 bit) with the required plugins installed, in sync. Ideally, I would like to exclude the runtime generated files from the sync process. I don't have an exhaustive list of files/folders to exclude but that is the next challenge.

I tried putting one install into a local git repo, then pushing this to a remote repo, followed by cloning from the repo onto the other location. I couldn't launch the cloned instance of Eclipse. I get this error :: http://pastebin.com/BpttUgvG

Versions of interest: Helios, Indigo

I have attempted the following without success

• Start with eclipse -clean
• Add -vm option to eclipse.ini file

Any suggestions would be gratefully welcomed.

** EDIT ** Is it possible to do this without having to purchase additional software?

Answer 1

I use a script to set up my installs the exact same way on multiple computers. Eclipse comes with the p2 director, which can be used from the command line to install and update plugins.

For example, I download and untar my eclipse-SDK-I20110607-0800-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz and then use the director to load my standard set of features:

bash$ eclipse/eclipse \
-application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director \
-noSplash \
-repository \
http://download.eclipse.org/egit/updates-nightly,\
http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/3.7,\
http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo \
-installIUs \
org.eclipse.egit.feature.group,\
org.eclipse.egit.source.feature.group,\
org.eclipse.jgit.feature.group,\
org.eclipse.jgit.source.feature.group,\
org.eclipse.emf.sdk.feature.group,\
org.eclipse.xtext.sdk.feature.group,\
org.eclipse.releng.tools.feature.group

The director can also be used to update an install, although non-intuitively by uninstall and then re-installing the same feature in the same call.

EDIT:

For a set of IUs you can keep each install up to date using uninstall/re-install in the same director call ... if there's an update available:

bash$ eclipse/eclipse \
-application org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director \
-noSplash \
-repository \
http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/3.7 \
-uninstallIU org.eclipse.sdk.ide \
-installIU org.eclipse.sdk.ide \

I don't think you can use this approach just yet, as you need to avoid bug 368238

The director won't effect most settings (formatting, keybindings, etc) as they're workspace scoped (INSTANCE) preferences. Some like formatting or code templates can be turned into project scoped preferences, and then saved in the SCM with the rest of the project information. There are hacks as well to copy workspace scoped preferences to every new workspace that you create.