Import and Export Eclipse Profiles
Profiles for Eclipse is a cloud service to share your Eclipse setups, right? Well, yes, and we’re convinced that sharing your profiles online is a great way to work with your team. But that doesn’t mean you have to upload your data to be able to share your setup.
We often get asked if it is possible to use the Eclipse Launcher locally without uploading anything. And while we take the privacy of your uploaded profiles very seriously, there are a lot of good reasons why you can’t — or don’t want to — upload your setup data. Maybe corporate policy or client agreements prohibit you from uploading anything, ever — even if it’s just a plug-in list or the name of your repository. Or you are behind a corporate firewall that blocks traffic to our Hub. Or you’d just like to try the Launcher out locally.
In any case, we’ve got you covered: Just export your profile locally and share it however and with whomever you like. Here’s how:
Getting Started
If you don’t have the Eclipse Launcher yet, grab it from here. It should detect your recently used Eclipse installations and workspaces automatically on first start. Otherwise you can add them manually from the side menu, using the “Create Profile” action.
Once you start your Eclipse workspace using the Launcher, we will automatically analyze it and assemble all the required setup data locally. If you’ve already started your Eclipse directly, please close and restart it with the Launcher.
Exporting a profile to a file
Inside Eclipse, you should now find the Yatta Plug-In menu with all profile-related actions in your toolbar.
If your profile was just freshly added to the Launcher, you might want to take the opportunity to update the local profile name and icon with the Rename Profile… action before exporting it. This will not just change how you see your profile in the Launcher, it’s also what others will see when they install your exported profile.
You can also enrich your profile by recording additional preference settings or by saving your current workbench layout.
Once you’re satisfied, just hit Export Profile… to create a local file for your profile configuration. Choose the location where you want to save your profile, and that’s it!
Installing an exported Profile
In order to install an exported profile, you will need a recent version of the Eclipse Launcher. So grab it from here if you don’t have it yet.
The easiest way to import the profile file is using drag & drop. Once you have the Launcher running, just drag the exported *.ep file from your file manager onto the Launcher’s profile list to trigger the install.
This will open an install dialog where you can customize the profile name and icon, and change the locations for the Eclipse installation and workspace that we will set up for you. Once you’re happy, confirm the install, lean back and let us take care of the rest.
Instead of using drag&drop, you can also import the profile using Create Profile from the Launcher’s side menu or from within Eclipse using Import New Profile in the Yatta Plug-In’s toolbar menu.
Try it out at https://www.yatta.de/profiles/, see what else is going on with Yatta Profiles and the Launcher in our latest changelogs, and get in touch with us at profiles@yatta.de or @YattaSolutions.
