If I try to put repository inside project folder
it warns it is not recommended to put git repository inside workspace.
If I try to create intermediate folder
it swears "overlaps the location of another project" at the stage of creating new project.
And if I try to create project inside workspace and repository outside, it moves the project also outside of workspace
So, the only way to use Git under Eclipse it totally abandon workspace?
If you choose the last solution you present, to deal with git and Eclipse, you will not abandon workspace, all your code will remain into your Project Workspace but you will get an additionnal folder somewhere else containing your same code, versioned, a local git repository. By choosing this solution, you can only version some parts of your project and you also avoid some possible conflicts that can arise when versioning your workspace project folder. You can also have a cleaner view of your code if you want it without eclipse metadata and do some complex git tasks on the commandline in this separate folder.
Related
I installed a fresh copy of eclipse Neon, and created a new gradle java project in a new and shiny workspace. What is the best practice for adding git to the party?
I read that initializing git in the project directory is really a bad idea.
What is a particularly good idea then?!
Thanks!
The good idea is to git init a parent folder of the project different from the main workspace folder.
This is exactly what happens if you let Egit git init your project (Right click on project -> Team -> Share Project -> Git ->...) and select an external folder as repository, say c:\users\john\my-git-repository.
You will then have two folders:
c:\users\john\my-git-repository containing the \.git folder and \<my-project> folder
c:\users\john\<eclipse-workspace> the eclipse workspace folder, which will NOT contain your project folder (remember that eclipse workspace is just a logical container for projects, they don't need to be physically there).
Another option is to create a folder inside the workspace, create the project as a subfolder of that folder and then git init that folder. This way:
c:\users\john\<eclipse-workspace>\shared-projects\<my-project>
You will create the repository in the \shared-projects folder (either by command line with git init or from whithin Eclipse with the wizard), which will contain the \.git folder, \<my-project> folder and any other project you want to share.
Remember why Eclipse suggests to keep repositories outside the workspace (https://wiki.eclipse.org/EGit/User_Guide#Creating_Repositories):
It is a good idea to keep your Repository outside of your Eclipse Workspace.
There are several reasons for this:
The new Repository will consider the complete folder structure of the Eclipse workspace as (potential) content. This can result in performance issues, for example when calculating the changes before committing (which will scan the complete .metadata folder, for example)
If your git repo is in the \shared-projects folder the repository will NOT consider the complete folder structure of the Eclipse workspace as (potential) content and will NOT scan the .metadata folder since it's outside the repo. The only contents of the repo will be your shared projects!
I have a git repo that has a lot of test scripts in it. I started by setting this repo as my "workspace" in eclipse so I could make changes directly with eclipse and then just push them up to bitbucket once they are done.
Eclipse wont let me do this, I cant see anything in my work space and when I try to import the local repo to the workspace it tells me "Can't import project MavenTest from an existing workspace folder"
This doesn't make sense to me since I would have to make a separate workspace from my repo and then do the work into the workspace and manually copy it to the local repo and then push it up to bitbucket. Also pulling everything down will be a pain too since I'll have to copy any changes to my workspace. I defeats the whole purpose of version control.
Can someone please explain to me what I am doing wrong? I just want to work, push and pull all in the same directory.
Eclipse expects everything at the top level of its workspace directory to be a project, or otherwise content written by a plug-in through Eclipse's APIs. Any other content in the repository will be unusable and not importable as its location already overlaps the location of the workspace.
I would have to make a separate workspace from my repo and then do the work into the workspace and manually copy it to the local repo and then push it up to bitbucket.
Wrong. You're under the misconception that everything shown in the workspace has to physically live under the workspace directory, which is very untrue. They don't have to be there, they don't even have to be physical files.
Typically you will make Eclipse aware of the local clone using its Git Repositories View, and then use the view's context menus to import content from the repository's working directory as projects in the workspace (or using a Maven wizard provided through M2E). This import will not duplicate anything. You will still have one canonical location for your sources: your repository.
https://wiki.eclipse.org/EGit/User_Guide#Creating_Repositories
When sharing a project as git and trying to make the Eclipse project folder as the git repository, Eclipse says that it is not recommended to do so and that it should be outside the Eclipse workspace.
Why is that?
From Eclipse EGit help pages,
It is probably not a good idea to make a project the root folder of your Repository
The reason is that you will never be able to add another project to this Repository, as the .project file will occupy the root folder; you could still add projects as sub-folders, but this kind of project nesting is known to cause lots of problems all over the place. In order to add another project, you would have to move the project to a sub-folder in the Repository and add the second project as another sub-folder before you could commit this change.
Some more information
It is a good idea to keep your Repository outside of your Eclipse Workspace
There are several reasons for this:
The new Repository will consider the complete folder structure of the Eclipse workspace as (potential) content. This can result in performance issues, for example when calculating the changes before committing (which will scan the complete .metadata folder, for example); more often than not, the workspace will contain dead folders (e.g. deleted projects) which semantically are not relevant for EGit but can not be excluded easily.
The metadata (.git-) folder will be a child of the Eclipse Workspace. It is unclear whether this might cause unwanted folder traversals by Eclipse.
You can easily destroy your Repository by destroying your Eclipse Workspace
While I agree about keeping the repository outside the Eclipse workspace, and I would still make a git repo within an Eclipse project root directory (like in this answer).
Unless your program is composed of lots of little inter-dependent projects, I would limit one git repo to one Eclipse project.
A git repo is about recording the content of a tree structure, and if that tree represents one project, it is easier to manage, tag, branch, merge (as a coherent set of files).
If it represents multiple project, you are not sure anymore about what a tag like "1.0" represents for each of the projects in that Git repo.
Plus, I like to add the .project, .classpath and .settings to the Git repo (as "Does git exclude eclipse project files from a new repo by default?")
Im very new to git ingeneral, egit and github.
The problem:
Lets say I have a project for eclipse in c:/username/workspace name "Test". So I versioned it and pushed it up to github.
Now I can see all my Files in github under the directory "Test" in github. In example /src. The "Test" directory is not versioned. only the name of the repository is "Test".
My next step was to delete my local files and fetch my project again(For testing). After that I had to import my project again (but I had to use the new project wizard) over the egit view. Unluckily also the wrong scala version was detected. (Was a play framework project). So I had a big exclamation mark on the project view.
My questions:
What is the best practice to oush a project to github so everyone can participate? Everything under the project folder? Obviously some information got lost through the process.
How can I prevent to generate a new project every time someone clones the repository?
What about best practices for using git inside the workspace. Eclipse warned not to put the project inside the workspace.
Im coming from a subversion background :/. Maybe a general missunderstanding.
Thanks in advance
Switching from SVN to Git in an Eclipse environment can take some getting use to. (I'm still getting accustomed to it myself.) Keep in mind the difference between the role of the .git folder and the .svn folders for Git and SVN respectively. There is a .svn folder at every folder level in the working copy. There is no .svn folder in the traditional Eclipse workspace root. The "source controlled things" are subdirectories of the workspace, not the workspace itself. This is generally good because the workspace contains desktop specific settings that one generally doesn't want shared (much of it in the .metadata directory).
With Git, there is only one .git folder that contains everything. The first impulse is to do a
git init
at the workspace level. This would make the subfolders (the Eclipse projects) eligible for source control. But wait, so is .metadata. Of course you can ignore it. But you may have to ignore lots of other folders (projects) that you do not want source controlled. Of course, the .gitignore should be included. But others will have different files to ignore.
It turns out that its easier to use Git with Eclipse if you place the .git folder and its sibling source controlled folders (Eclipse projects) someplace else besides the workspace root. Your view in Eclipse doesn't change. You still see all your projects, both the Git-controlled and the SVN controlled and ones not shared at all. But underneath in the filesystem, the Git-controlled folders will be somewhere else. This is what EGit prefers.
On my desktop, I have a workspaces directory for most of my Eclipse workspaces. Now that I use EGit, I also have an egit directory where I keep the local EGit repositories. The Eclipse workspaces that share using EGit reference a subdirectory of egit. It's from these local Git repositories that one pushes and pulls from GitHub.
Sorry for the length. I got a bit carried away.
Issue
After importing an Eclipse project from a cloned git repository, I make some changes and commit - and wtf? I get a ".git" folder added to the project, the whole shebang with the heads and refs and worst of all the whole object database gets added to the project, all files/folders having that little question-mark icon signaling that the files have not been added / are not yet tracked by git. This .git folder exists in the actual Working Directory (how does that even make sense?). You can imagine what an annoyance this causes when trying to use the "Synchronize" tool/view (which is supposed to make life easier for committing, you can see all the changes and changed files and diffs).
Question (tl;dr)
How to correctly import an Eclipse project from a cloned git repository? I don't want a .git folder showing up in "Team > Synchronize" when I commit, let the .git folder reside somewhere else outside of my project.
Additional Info
I'm on Windows 7 using Eclipse Indigo and Egit.
I am using Egit to clone a git repo from http://git.apache.org/ (the ofbiz project, to be exact) and in the wizard I choose the option to import an existing project from this newly cloned repo.
Yes I am aware of how little I may expect from Egit. In fact, if there are any alternative ways (external git tool? command line git for windows? other?) to use a git-tracked project in Eclipse which keeps the actual .git stuff out of the project, i'd gladly abandon Egit.
When you clone a git repository, the default behavior is to create a .git folder inside the root of the local clone. You can change the default behavior by setting the GIT_DIR variable:
Git docs says:
"GIT_DIR
If the GIT_DIR environment variable is set then it specifies a path to use instead of the default .git for the base of the repository."
Depending on which terminal you use, you could set it using setenv or export.
For example in a bash terminal:
export GIT_DIR='[path_to_git_directory]'
After setting the variable, you should be able to clone and the .git directory should show up at the specified directory.
I totally agree - I can't imagine it would ever be anyones intent to commit the .git folder!
And git/EGit knows that this is the repository folder of the project, so it should be easy to implement the appropriate exception - so that this folder does not become part of the synchronization.
I know the following does not solve your problem, but in cases where you control the way files are layed out in the repository, you could choose to have the Eclipse project folder not be the root folder of the repository, but rather a sub-folder.
This also allows you to have stuff in the repository that should not show up in Eclipse, or even have multiple Eclipse projects grouped in one repository (if you should wish to do so).