Automated setup of Eclipse?

I work for a company that uses Eclipse and a bunch of plugins for their development environment.

I'm trying to come up with an automated way to install everything(eclipse, and plugins) and configure the servers, subversion, task repositories, Maven, and Tomcat.

The current solution is to setup Eclipse and all of its plugins, and then stick it in a zip file. Then, you still need to install tomcat (and hook it into eclipse) and then setup SVN, tasks (bugzilla), and Maven by hand.

Also-- they currently develop on Windows, and I'm trying to get this set up on ubuntu 11.10.

Any advice for how to make this as easy as unpacking a tar and running a script? I'm trying to use git diff to figure out what eclipse is doing, but it's been far from fruitful.

You should try the Workspace Mechanic plugin. This can share/setup whatever you want.

The Workspace Mechanic automates maintenance of your Eclipse environment by tweaking preferences, adding extension locations, and so on. You can use it to:

• Create a consistent environment among groups as large as the entire company, your local team, or even among your own many workspaces
• Save time setting up new workspaces
• Create tasks that ensure your favorite new preferences are applied to all your current and future workspaces. (This is one of our favorite features!)

We are using it and it "just works".

I think the ziping soulution is a good start. Then you can install a macro plugin and execute the configuration

http://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/eclipse-keyboard-macro-recorder