Updating the IDL Workbench

The IDL Workbench provides an easy way to update and add to your IDL installation via the Internet. The Software Updates feature allows you to locate plugins that provide new features or revisions to existing features and install them automatically.

Types of features you might install include:

Updates to the IDL Workbench itself, provided by ITT Visual Information Solutions.

IDL features not included in the standard IDL distribution, such as file readers or even entire code libraries. These additional features may be available from the ITT Visual Information Solutions Code Contribution library or from other repositories set up by third parties.

Eclipse features not included in the standard IDL Workbench distribution, such as source code managers (CVS, Subversion) or other productivity tools. These features may be available from ITT Visual Information Solutions (as is the plugin that integrates the CVS source code manager into the IDL Workbench) or from third parties.

Warning
While adding plugins provided by third parties should leave the IDL-specific features of the IDL Workbench unaltered, ITT Visual Information Solutions cannot vouch for the stability, quality, or usefulness of plugins from other sources. If you install a plugin that appears to adversely affect the IDL Workbench, uninstalling that single plugin should resolve the problem.

Installing New Features

To install new features, do the following:

Select Help → Software Updates → Find and Install...

Select Search for new features to install and click Next>.

Select an update site or add a new update site.

The IDL Workbench includes the ITT Visual Information Solutions update site and some Eclipse-related sites by default. You can easily add other update sites to the list; see the Installing new features with the update manager topic in the IDL Online Help for details.

For this example, select the ITT Visual Information Solutions update site.

Additions to the IDL Workbench itself are contained in the Workbench Updates section. In this section you will find plugins that provide additional or updated functionality to the workbench interface.

The IDL Code Contributions section of the update site contains features that augment the IDL language. These plugins generally contain IDL source code, and may consist of single routines, entire applications, or even code libraries. Features available in this section have been created by IDL users either within or outside ITT Visual Information Solutions. While they have not received the rigorous quality assurance testing that IDL itself receives, they are of high quality and may be useful depending on your needs.

After selecting a feature to install, click Next>. Read and accept the license agreement for the feature, and click Next> again.

By default, plugins are installed in a subdirectory of the IDL installation directory, and IDL's search path is updated so that IDL can find the new plugin. You can install plugins in other directories by clicking Change Location; note, however, that if you install plugins in a different location you may need to manually modify IDL's search path.

Updating Existing Features

To search for updates to features you have already installed, including the IDL Workbench itself:

Select Help → Software Updates → Find and Install...

Select Search for updates of the currently installed features and click Next>.

The Update manager searches the network for updates to features in your current installation.

If it finds updates available, select the features you want to update and click Next>. Read and accept the license agreement for the feature, and click Next> again.

Managing Your Configuration

You can also use the Product Configuration dialog to manage your installation, search for updates, and disable specific plugins.

Select Help → Software Updates → Manage Configuration to display the Product Configuration dialog.