If you ever have any issues with the p2 dropins directory (which you shouldn’t be using in the first place), there are some handy tracing options you can use…
org.eclipse.equinox.p2.core/debug=true
org.eclipse.equinox.p2.core/reconciler=true
Just create a .options file at the root of the Eclipse installation directory and pass -debug when you start Eclipse. You should see some debug output from p2 in the log…
[p2] Mon Apr 04 08:36:19 CDT 2011 - [Start Level Event Dispatcher] [reconciler] [dropins] Repository created file:/usr/share/eclipse/dropins/pydev/
[p2] Mon Apr 04 08:36:19 CDT 2011 - [Start Level Event Dispatcher] [reconciler] [dropins] com.python.pydev.codecompletion 1.6.1.2010080312
[p2] Mon Apr 04 08:36:19 CDT 2011 - [Start Level Event Dispatcher] [reconciler] [dropins] org.python.pydev.parser 1.6.1.2010080312
[p2] Mon Apr 04 08:36:19 CDT 2011 - [Start Level Event Dispatcher] [reconciler] [dropins] org.python.pydev.feature.feature.jar 1.6.1.2010080312
[p2] Mon Apr 04 08:36:19 CDT 2011 - [Start Level Event Dispatcher] [reconciler] [dropins] org.python.pydev.help 1.6.1.2010080312
[p2] Mon Apr 04 08:36:19 CDT 2011 - [Start Level Event Dispatcher] [reconciler] [dropins] org.python.pydev.debug 1.6.1.2010080312
[p2] Mon Apr 04 08:36:19 CDT 2011 - [Start Level Event Dispatcher] [reconciler] [dropins] com.python.pydev.fastparser 1.6.1.2010080312
[p2] Mon Apr 04 08:36:19 CDT 2011 - [Start Level Event Dispatcher] [reconciler] [dropins] org.python.pydev.feature.feature.group 1.6.1.2010080312
Happy debugging!