I was always told that it is a best practice to create your projects outside of Eclipse's workspace.
But it gets not really convenient when you want to import an existing project or creating a new one, to each time browse to your "projects" folder instead of the default "workspace" folder that Eclipse suggests.
Is there a way to tell Eclipse "yes, my workspace is in C:\Users\David\workspace" but all my projects must be created in C:\dev\projects" ?
Related
I am using Eclipse Indigo, and after having successfully extracted my project folder into my Eclipse workspace, it does not show up in the package explorer. I tried refreshing eclipse and restarting it, to no avail. I am 100% certain my eclipse is using the right directory and the project is in it.
What could be the problem? Thank you.
EDIT: "import projects into workspace" worked for me, but why was that necessary?
Files in the directory are not automatically picked up by the package explorer. You need to import them.
Try using the File > import, then choose
Existing Projects into workspace.
There is a checkbox that says "Copy projects into workspace" which copies it to your workspace if it happens to be in a different folder. If you start with your files in another folder, you'll see how it's copied and set up with configuration files in your workspace directory.
To answer the question, "why is it necessary to import?" you have to realize that the Eclipse workspace is just a logical container for projects, not necessarily the physical container for them.
Also realize that a directory of project-related files does not make an Eclipse Project; Eclipse must be given or generate it's own set of configuration in order to understand a project (minimally, for Java projects, .project and .classpath). Without those, Eclipse has no idea what to do with an arbitrary folder that you call a "project." That's what the Import or Create Project wizards are doing under the covers, generating those config files.
This is how the workspace assign on an eclipse
My Web project run only when my project is at c:\Ampps\www\myProject but eclipse contains it on C:\Simple\workspace\myProject. My problem is I want to run project and the workspace is different. What is the things keep in mind before choosing the workspace. And what are the alternatives if the wrong workspace choosen ?
Eclipse does not require your projects to live under your workspace folder. Therefore you are allowed to have a project and workspace as you describe.
When creating a project, uncheck the default location checkbox in the wizard and select your truly desired location.
My only recommendation on workspace location is to have it on a local drive and don't have it as a sub directory of any project in your workspace.
First, Eclipse is not my native IDE -- I'm barely a n00b with it. I set up a project in a workspace that was actually in the directory of another client's project (I didn't really follow the whole workspace/project thing) and, in fact, now I can't even find the Eclipse workspace file to open it.
What I'd like to do is:
Open my eclipse project (/workspace?) -- I know where all the files are on disk, just not what to open in order to see them in Eclipse -- and
Move my project to a new workspace, which I guess I will put in a generic Eclipse-y place, and have that one workspace reference all my Eclipse projects.
(Is that the right way to do it? Does Eclipse dislike me being a one-project == one-workspace kind of guy?)
Please educate me regarding The Eclipse Way so that I can get back to work writing code.
Thanks!
Roughly a workspace (which is a directory) in Eclipse contains:
configuration (installed JRE, Servers runtimes, code formatting rules, ...)
one or more projects
You can of course have as many workspaces as you want (but only one can be opened at a time) and a project can also be part of different workspaces.
If you know where your sources are and want to move them to a new workspace here is a possible solution:
Start Eclipse and when prompted for a workspace choose where you want the workspace to be created (if directory doesn't exist it will be created). For example you can choose C:/Dev/Workspace/.
If you are not prompted, go to File->Switch workspace->Other
Once you are in your workspace you can import your exisiting project with File->Import then General->Existing Projects into workspace
Navigate to the folder containing your project sources, select your project and click finish
I don't know if it's a best practice or not but what I usually do is the following:
I have one workspace for each of my customer (workspace_cust1, workspace_cust2)
Each workspace references my commons library projects and add client specific projects
This way each time I change my commons library it's up to date in every workspace.
If you want to apply
one workspace = one project
You could to the following:
1) Copy the eclipse desktop shorcut
2) Modify the shortcut by appending "-data workspaceLocation "
When importing a project into Eclipse, there is a checkbox "Copy projects into workspace". I want to know what does this mean. Do I need to select this?
Basically, you want to do this if you want to copy the files of the project you are importing under the workspace folder, and have two copies of the project on your computer at once. This may or may not be what you want to do. In my case it is not what I want to do, as I already have my projects placed in the proper and final location before I import them. My "workspace" folder remains void of project files. This is completely acceptable and is likely what a newcomer to Eclipse working on a test project will want to do. If you are working for someone else, you should ask your employer the setup protocol.
Every project in Eclipse is part of a workspace, which can be any folder, but usually developers keep the workspace folder as a parent to project folders. So, in this context, Eclipse is asking you, if you already have a workspace, whether you want to copy the project you are importing, to that workspace.
I will explain with an example: for my Android work, I have workspace folder called Android-<Product-Name>. In this I have library projects lib1, lib2, and the base Android project (called <product-name>) that uses those libraries. Hope this makes sense.
I'm trying to re-familiarize my self with the Eclipse environment and ant integration.
Question is: how to keep my sources dir + build.xml separate from the workspace?
What I have is
a small java project and its build.xml file with all the sources placed under a separate
project folder. I then started Eclipse and let it import my project via
New Project -> "Java Project from existing Ant Build File"
All went fine, until when I wanted to build the project from inside Eclipse using build.xml.
Ant starts complaining about not being able to find the source tree. After I examined
the workspace I found that Eclipse had copied the build.xml into the workspace, so it's
obvious that ant couldn't find any sources there. They are still under my project director
and I do want to keep them there, if possible.
so whats the best way so make this setup work? workspace on one side, my project on the other?
Thank!
edit: Is what I want even possible ?
Instead of using "Java Project from Existing Ant Buildfile", just create a simple "Java Project". In the wizard uncheck "use default location" and enter the path (or browse) to the top level directory of your existing project (i.e., where your build.xml is). True, eclipse will create .project and .classpath files in your project directory (if they do not already exist), but the project will remain outside the eclipse workspace.
Case in point, this setup has worked really well in a very particular situation on a standalone system where the source tree resides in a common location but each user has a workspace in a protected location. Using the method described above, each user of this system can create a project in their own eclipse workspace, execute ant targets and subsequently remove the project from their own workspace without affecting other users' workspaces.
What about using links?
Windows Symbolic Links
Linux man page for ln
I do this all the time in C++ projects (no Java, sorry, but I think the concept is portable).
I have my workspaces in ~/workspaces/{workspace_name}. I have a single shared project file in ~/{my_projects, and then the source trees (multiple versions) are in ~/proj1, ~/proj2, etc.
Within each ~/proj* directory, I put a symlink to ~/my_projects/.project and .cproject (required for C++, not used in Java). So each source tree is sharing the single project file. Then in each workspace (one for each source tree), I configure the workspace by importing the project link. For example, ~/workspaces/proj1 imports ~/proj1/.project, but ~/proj1/.project is actually a symlink to ~/my_projects/.project.
So this keeps the source separate from the workspaces. When building, there's no real configuration to do -- I just have Eclipse run make in the appropriate node of the tree -- we already have our own command-oriented build system (we're not using ant, but the same principle should apply).
I source-control the ~/my_projects folder in a private area of the SCM, so other team members don't see it or fiddle with it -- many of them don't use Eclipse at all.
There isn't really any need to try and avoid Ant and Eclipse using the same set of source files. In fact, its probably better that they do use the same set.
Bear in mind, you're not actually mixing anything. There is just one set of source files and then there are two different ways of building it; Ant and Eclipse. These builders are independent of each other, so there is no problem with being coupled to Eclipse. You can even happily commit all the eclipse files (.classpath, .project, .settings) to source control without affecting any developers who use a different IDE.
I do this all of the time (admittedly using maven, not ant), but the same principle applies.
If you have an existing project in Eclipse (with the .project in the source tree), then you can Import Project->Import Existing Project. When the dialog box comes up, you can choose to 'Copy projects into workspace'. Make sure this is unchecked, and them import.
You still store the .project in the original source tree, but thats all.
So now I have
code/xxx (which contains the .java files, which are in SVN)
code/xxx-workspace (which contains the eclipse workspace)