Eclipse does not update: "There were no units selected when planning the plan."

Question

I had Eclipse installed on my old laptop. I got a new laptop, and I copied the eclipse tree and my workspace to a new laptop. Most of them seem to be working on the new laptop, but I noticed today when I saw that the plugin update had passed. I tried updating both old and new laptops. The upgrade on the old laptop went fine, but the upgrade attempt on the new laptop failed: "There were no blocks selected when planning the plan."

This is an excerpt from the log file corresponding to the attempt:

! ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.operations 4 0 2012-02-03 16: 34: 51.791 MESSAGE Details of the operation! SUBENTRY 1 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 1 2012-02-03 16: 34: 51.791! MESSAGE Unable to complete the installation because one or more of the required items could not be found. SUBENTRY 2 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 0 2012-02-03 16: 34: 51.791! MESSAGE Currently installed software: general profile 1.0.0.1328029049876 (SharedProfile_com.springsource.sts.ide 1.0.0.1328029049876)! SUBENTRY 2 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 0 2012-02-03 16: 34: 51.791! MESSAGE Missing requirement: general profile 1.0.0.1328029049876 (SharedProfile_com.springsource.sts.ide 1.0.0.1328029049876) requires 'org.maven.ide.eclipse [1.1.0.20120130-2016]', but this could not be found

! ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.operations 4 0 2012-02-03 16: 34: 52.325 MESSAGE Details of the operation! SUBENTRY 1 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 1 2012-02-03 16: 34: 52.325! MESSAGE Unable to complete the installation because one or more of the required items could not be found. SUBENTRY 2 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 0 2012-02-03 16: 34: 52.325! MESSAGE Currently installed software: general profile 1.0.0.1328029049876 (SharedProfile_com.springsource.sts.ide 1.0.0.1328029049876)! SUBENTRY 2 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 0 2012-02-03 16: 34: 52.325! MESSAGE Missing requirement: general profile 1.0.0.1328029049876 (SharedProfile_com.springsource.sts.ide 1.0.0.1328029049876) requires 'org.maven.ide.eclipse [1.1.0.20120130-2016]', but this could not be found

! ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.operations 4 0 2012-02-03 16: 34: 52.362 MESSAGE Details of the operation! SUBENTRY 1 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 1 2012-02-03 16: 34: 52.362! MESSAGE Unable to complete the installation because one or more of the required items could not be found. SUBENTRY 2 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 0 2012-02-03 16: 34: 52.362! MESSAGE Currently installed software: general profile 1.0.0.1328029049876 (SharedProfile_com.springsource.sts.ide 1.0.0.1328029049876)! SUBENTRY 2 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.director 4 0 2012-02-03 16: 34: 52.362! MESSAGE Missing requirement: general profile 1.0.0.1328029049876 (SharedProfile_com.springsource.sts.ide 1.0.0.1328029049876) requires 'org.maven.ide.eclipse [1.1.0.20120130-2016]', but this could not be found

! ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.ui 4 0 2012-02-03 16: 34: 52.438 MESSAGE There were no units selected when planning the plan.

! ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.ui 4 0 2012-02-03 16: 34: 52.440! MESSAGE When planning the plan, there were no units selected.

! ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.ui 4 0 2012-02-03 16: 34: 52.440! MESSAGE When planning the plan, there were no units selected.

Answer 1

I solved it. This was a Windows Seven / Program Files issue. You cannot install STS or Eclipse in "Program Files" because it must be written to the application directory and usually does not start with administrator privileges.

I would like this to not lead to such stupid symptoms. You would think that at least you would say something like "could not write to the application directory."

Answer 2

I ran into the same problem and solved this by running eclipse.exe "as administrator" to perform the update:

Answer 3

In my case, the problem was that I (on Mac OSX) had previously installed the plugin that I was trying to update as superuser. The solution was to run eclipse as root.

$ sudo /Applications/development/eclipse/eclipse 

(there is a convenient eclipse link in the root of your eclipse folder).