I currently have Eclipse 3.0 installed on my system. I would like to upgrade to stable build Eclipse 3.1 M4 however I can’t find any good definitive information on the topic. What I found here tells me I need to extract the new version to a directory different from my 3.0 version. But which archive do I download? I’m also going to use the -data flag as the link suggests and move my workspace to a more generic location out from under my eclipse install.
When I go to download from the a mirror or anywhere else from that matter the differences in each file aren’t really explained. Since I already have the sdk installed can I download one of the smaller archives or do I need to go for the full 50+ meg monster? Do I even need the SDK or do only folks who are working on Eclipse plugins need the SDK while the rest of us can get by with the platform?
Also, if I can just get by with the platform and not the entire SDK - will it be a bit more responsive? I know my machine isn’t that great but sometimes Eclipse is a real chore to use due to “laggish” behaviour. I installed a plugin that helps some - but it is by no means a cure. If you have any suggestions/tips/ideas or anything please leave a comment.
I’m going to download the vanilla platform for now and see if the plugins I use typically will work with the platform and not just the SDK. I’ll update this post later with anything I find.
UPDATE
well it seems that the platform is sufficient for my needs. However, I keep
getting an error message when I try to close eclipse. I will post more here
once I figure out what is causing the error, and how to fix it.
UPDATE 02 FEB 2005
Well, i figured out what the problem was - sort of. I had been starting
Eclipse with the -data and -vm flags as suggested by the help article I
referenced earlier. Going back to starting it without it prompted me for the
workspace to open and it had a checkbox to make the selected workspace the
default. By picking the workspace location instead of specifying it via the
-data flag and telling Eclipse that it was default the shutdown error went
away.
I am presuming the error was caused by Eclipse not being properly initialized and not knowing where to save some data. I have not been able to reproduce the error since I made the change.