About the Virgo Tools
The Virgo Tools/IDE consists in a set of Eclipse plug-ins that allow a seamless integration between the Eclipse IDE and the Virgo Server. The tooling supports the following:
- Bundle projects (OSGi bundles to be developed using Virgo's Bundlor tool)
- PDE Bundle projects (OSGi bundles to be developed using Eclipse Plug-in Development Environment, PDE)
- Maven Bundle projects (OSGi bundles developed as regular Eclipse Maven projects and using the BND Maven plug-in)
- Par projects
- Plan Projects
- Web Bundles
- Deployment to a Virgo Server in the server view (that is, deploying artefacts, starting and stopping Virgo Server from within Eclipse)
Note: support for Eclipse PDE was introduced in version 1.5 of the Virgo Tools which now allow developing OSGi bundles using PDE as long as the Java project in Eclipse is created using the the dedicated PDE Bundle Project wizard provided by Virgo Tools. Please refer to the official documentation (available as online help within Eclipse once Virgo Tools are installed) for further details.
If you're not installing into an existing Eclipse, you'll need one. Due to the Virgo Tools dependency toward Eclipse PDE, it's recommended that when downloading Eclipse, you avoid the installer and rather go to Download Packages and choose either Eclipse IDE for Eclipse Committers or Eclipse IDE for Enterprise Java and Web Developers .
There is no official release yet, but you can download a snapshot build of Virgo Tools 1.6.0 from our Jenkins CI server here which works perfectly in Eclipse 2023-* .
Please note that the package from Jenkins is an archived P2 site, so after downloading the zip file in order to install you will have to Help -> Install New Software... -> Add -> Archive and point to the downloaded file.
If you are forced to use an older versions of Eclipse, Virgo Tools 1.5.2 should work with Eclipse from 2019 to 2022 and you may try Virgo Tools 1.5.1 for Eclipse Luna 4.4. Eclipse Mars 4.5, Eclipse Neon 4.6, Eclipse Oxygen 4.7.
To install any of those versions open Eclipse and
- Select Help>Install New Software..
- Enter http://download.eclipse.org/virgo/release/tooling
- Select "Virgo Tools" feature in the appropriate version and click install.
Note: Select only Virgo Tools. This is a composite site, and the other features are not designed to work within the Eclipse IDE.
Note that in order to install Virgo Tools on versions of Eclipse older than Eclipse SimRel 2019-6 in addition to the above update sites you may have to add the following update sites to the list of known update sites in Preferences -> Install/Updates -> Available Software Sites and you will need to check Contact all update sites during install to find required software
- http://download.eclipse.org/virgo/release/updatesite/3.7.2.RELEASE/
- http://download.eclipse.org/tools/orbit/R-builds/R20170516192513/repository/
Due to the change in release frequency of the Eclipse IDE, the latest version of the Virgo Tools cannot support all versions of Eclipse. At present the intention is to provide a build/release of Virgo Tools that is built against and compatible with the latest version of Eclipse simultaneous release within few weeks from the Eclipse release date. Newer versions of Virgo Tools may work on older versions of Eclipse but this is not guaranteed.
The Virgo Tools support Virgo Server 3.5 or newer.