The RSE Eclipse Plugin for Working with FTP and SFTP

I needed a way to work with SFTP in Eclipse. After some Googling, I came across an article called “Working with FTP through Eclipse”, whose author praised the Remote System Explorer (RSE) plugin highly. I was intrigued and decided to install it myself!

Installation

I’m running Eclipse 3.4.2, so we’ll install it through Help -> Software Updates… -> Available Software and enter “rse” in the filter.

Then select the following items:

• RSE User Actions
• RSE FTP Services
• RSE SSH Services

Next, click “Install” and accept the license agreements. Restart, and that’s it—the installation is complete!

Usage

Select the “Remote System Explorer perspective” and create a new connection (New Connection), enter the connection settings, and enjoy!

In more detail:

Select the “Remote System Explorer” perspective, then right-click in the “Remote Systems” view (if you don’t see this view, go to “Window -> Show View -> Remote Systems” and it will appear) and select “New -> Connection…”.

Next, select the connection type: “SSH Only” for sftp, or “FTP Only” for ftp.
Click “Next”, then enter the “Host” and specify a name and description for your connection.

Then, in “Remote Systems”, select the connection you created and expand its tree, or right-click the connection and select “Connect” from the context menu. At this point, if a username/password is required, RSE will ask you for it.

If you’re using a non-standard port—for example, 2244 rather than 22 for ssh—you can change the port in “Show in table” (right-click the connection and select “Show in table”).

When you save a file, the plugin uploads it to the server. One more thing: if Eclipse complains about security, the problem is most likely with file permissions.