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.

Solution 1:

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.

Solution 2:

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.

Solution 3:

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.

Screenshot

Solution 4:

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.

Solution 5:

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.