Multiple Eclipse Installations in a Single User Environment

Cascaded and Shared Configuration

It is possible to install multiple copies of Eclipse in the same computer. Each copy of Eclipse might work on different development projects and share common plugins as well as having plugins of their own. This kind of setup works well if all copies of Eclipse have similar and compatible versions. If the Eclipse installs are different versions, you may experience problems. For example, it is not advisable to setup shared configuration if you have one instance of Eclipse Kepler to work on JBoss related projects, and another instance of Eclipse Mars to work on Birt report related projects.

If your Eclipse versions are compatible, you can setup each copy for shared configuration by editing the eclipse.ini file as follow:

Add these lines after the -vmargs line:

-Dosgi.configuration.cascaded=true
-Dosgi.configuration.area=@user.dir/configuration
-Dosgi.sharedConfiguration.area=@user.home/.eclipse/configuration
-Dosgi.sharedConfiguration.area.readOnly=false
-Dosgi.install.area.readOnly=true

Standalone Configurations

While having a shared configuration setup on a particular Eclipse version, you may setup an instance of Eclipse of different version with standalone configuration. By default, Eclipse are shipped with standalone configuration.

Updates of plugins in standalone Eclipse does not affect the updates of a shared configuration and vice versa.

Standalone Eclipse installation is straightforward. i.e. After the Eclipse package zip file had been downloaded, unzip it to your desired install drive and directory. That's it. You might want to rename the Eclipse home folder.

The following is the default setup environment:

-Dosgi.configuration.area=@user.dir/configuration

Common Mistake

Note: Never unzip one version of Eclipse over another version of Eclipse on the same directory.