How to uninstall plugins in Eclipse 3.4.X or higher

Question

The GUI for managing plugins in Eclipse got a bit of an overhaul in version 3.4.0. This GUI is accessed via the "Software Updates..." option in the Help menu.

The option to remove the selected Mylyn plugin is greyed out. In fact, this is true of virtually every installed plugin. I know that the Mylyn plugins are optional, so why amn't I provided with an option to remove them?

Solution 1

The following text is quoted from the Eclipse help docs:

The Uninstall wizard allows you to review and uninstall items in your configuration. This wizard is shown when you select items and press Uninstall... from the Installed Software page. To uninstall software from your system:

1. Click Help > About and then click Installation Details... to open a dialog showing pages that provide more detail about your installation.

2. Click the Installed Software tab to see a list of the software items that you have installed into your system.

3. Select the items that you wish to uninstall.

   Click Uninstall...

The Uninstall Details page will show you a list of the items that will be uninstalled. Expanding each item will show what additional items (if any) will be uninstalled as a result of your choice.

If you change your mind about which items should be uninstalled, you may click Back to see a checkmark list of the items you selected before. You may check and uncheck different items in the list, and click Next when you are ready to continue.

5. Click Finish to start the uninstall.

Once all of the software is uninstalled successfully, you will be prompted to restart for the Workbench. Click Yes when asked to exit and restart the Workbench for the changes to take effect.

Solution 2

And just to update it for Helios - Eclipse 3.6

Help->Install New Software at the bottom of dialog there is link What is already installed once you click on that you will get list of installed plugins and Uninstal... button

Solution 3

eclipse 3.5(Galieo) Help>> Install New Software >> Already Installed Plugins >> select Plugins >> Uninstall works charm.

Solution 4

If you are using Windows, make sure you are running Eclipse as administrator. Without administrator privileges, some options may be grayed-out in "Installed Software".

Solution 5

There are distributions of Eclipse that come packaged with certain plugins that can't be mix-and-matched. That is the case with Mylyn, that went from a student's thesis project to an integral part of Eclipse. If you want to actually get rid of Mylyn, you may want to install Eclipse classic instead of the distribution you have, and then install the stuff you need.

The standard Eclipse distributions come with Myln.

BTW, Eclipser 3.5 completely changes all these screens :(

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Comments

[howeroc]

The further issue is that actually using the Uninstall... option does not remove Mylyn (for example) from the list.

[prashant]

...and "Eclipse Classic" is one monolithic install, with no way to see which plugins it's made of, till you try and install one and it says "a newer version of this feature is already installed". Beautiful.

[Peter Jaric]

For me it said "What is already installed" instead of "Already Installed Plugins", but otherwise it was the same. As in DroidIn.net's answer about 3.6. Yes, I am running Galileo (3.5.2).

[Nils]

So they ship it with Mylyn which I do not use and I would not care to remove. However since it made eclipse stall for about a minute or so I wanted to remove. And uninstall is disabled when I select it :( So this doesn't help

[Dheeraj Vepakomma]

Way to go Eclipse! To uninstall a plugin one should click Help->About. Very intuitive indeed!

[mjs]

YEAH AND IT IS LIKE FIVE TOUSAND PLUGINS LISTED THERE ( RAD ) where one plugin probably has several entries

[Bernhard]

That helped me under linux - "sudo eclipse" and I was finally able to remove the Spring plugin, which was greyed out before!

[subhashis]

This is really helpful, but is there any way to select multiple installation and uninstall them, because every time we have to go like Help > About and then click Installation Details.