A handy little tip passed on to me from Eugene about using link files in eclipse. Using link files easily allows you to keep your own Eclipse plugins/extensions separate from the main Eclipse install. You can use the features in Eclipse itself to manage these too, but using simple link files it's quite easy to script up flipping Eclipse versions for testing, or testing a particular plugin with various versions of Eclipse. I just start trying to test the Maven Integration for Eclipse with Eclipse 3.2 and we have only been testing it Europa. Previously without link files, it's been a pain to flip between versions Eclipse with a given set of plugins. I often use/test the Maven Integration with Mylar and this is now much easier.

A short synopsis of an interview I did with the SDTimes about the Sonatype.