I’ll do some cliff notes to try to salvage a Saturday… as example:
algebraic:knime-workbench loki$ /Applications/KNIME\ 4.0.1.app/Contents/MacOS/Knime -console 1234
algebraic:~ loki$ telnet localhost 1234
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
osgi> ss org.knime.core
"Framework is launched."
id State Bundle
364 ACTIVE org.knime.core_4.0.1.v201908131254
365 ACTIVE org.knime.core.data.uritype_4.0.0.v201905311239
366 ACTIVE org.knime.core.pmml_4.0.0.v201905311127
367 ACTIVE org.knime.core.ui_4.0.1.v201908131226
369 STARTING org.knime.core.wizard_4.0.0.v201906032109
444 ACTIVE org.knime.core.util_5.12.1.v201909242005
osgi>
telnet> quit
Connection closed.
algebraic:~ loki$
You keep talking about Eclipse in addition to KNIME knowing about your plugins. If you’re building these things over via IntelliJ (or IntelliJ + stuff, but not using Eclipse as your IDE,) i don’t know why you keep bringing Eclipse up. Build the plugin jar, drop it in your target KNIME release, run KNIME.