Eclipse: PyDev installation difficulties

I'm having difficulty getting PyDev to work.

I had an installation of Eclipse for PHP developers (1.2.1.20090918-0703). A month ago, I installed PyDev, and everything worked great. I go to fire it up this morning, and PyDev is gone. There is no option to create a Python project, the Python language editor is missing, etc.

Eclipse for P开发者_开发技巧HP does not say that PyDev is installed, so I grab it from the update URL. The version that comes down is 1.5.6. I restart after the installation, and everything works fine again. Sweet.

Then, I grab Subclipse 1.0.7. Upon restarting after that installation, PyDev is now gone. It isn't recognizing Python projects or Python files, etc. So I uninstall Subclipse. PyDev is still gone. Uninstalling and reinstalling PyDev again doesn't bring it back.

What am I doing wrong? Do I need a different version of Eclipse?

UPDATE: I downloaded a fresh copy of Eclipse for Java, did all this over again, and had PyDev working fine. Then, when I downloaded JSEclipse, PyDev again disappeared. This is super frustrating.

UPDATE 2: Another fresh copy of Eclipse. This time I downloaded Subclipse first. It worked fine. Then I downloaded JSEclipse, and Subclipse is gone.

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there's an easy way to install plugin for eclipse, download the pydev package zip file (not install it via eclipse update), extract it, and put it into your eclipse/dropins/pydev folder.

this is a hidden way to install plugin.