I have a netbeans project that is under mercurial. What I would like to do is to strip down everything that makes this project netbeans project to only to leave code in there so that I can easily import it in say eclipse.
Is there some automated way to do this or do I have to remove manually this?
What approach would you recommend.
Cheers
You only have to add the nbproject folder to ignore (= don't check in). All NetBean-settings are placed in this folder. Dont check in the build and dist folder as well, because these contain the compiled code (but they are ignored per default).
The best way to do "IDE neutral projects" is to use Maven !
In NetBeans when the project is Maven-based (as opposed to Ant-based) you'll see that all those NetBeans-specific files that you normally see in nbproject folder are just not there. The nbproject folder doesn't even exist. The reason is that for a Maven-based project NetBeans essentially uses the pom.xml as the definition of the project and that's a good thing because the POM is portable and directly understood by other IDEs.
Even for a Maven-based project NetBeans will still store some IDE-specific stuff in a file called nb-configuration.xml but you can include all of the contents of this file as properties inside the pom.xml. These properties will then be ignored by other IDEs when they load the POM. This way you can pretty much avoid altogether to check any IDE-specific files into the VCS. Also it is worth mentioning that the stuff in nb-configuration.xml is never needed for someone else (using NetBeans or another IDE) to be able to build your project. Another way to put it is that it contains non-essential data. The POM - by virtue - is always guaranteed to be a complete description of how to build the project.
Contrary if your NetBeans project is Ant-based then at least in my experience you cannot avoid checking NetBeans specific files into the VCS ... because otherwise even those using NetBeans won't be able to correctly open your project.
However even with Maven there's one area where you'll be forced to have NetBeans-specific files in the VCS and that is if you use the Matisse GUI builder in NetBeans. The Matisse GUI builder produces some proprietary files with .form extension and you really need to have those in your VCS. But this is the only example I can come up with where NetBeans-specific files will need to go into the VCS assuming your project is Maven-based.
If the project indeed is Maven-based and you still feel that there are NetBeans-specific files that you need to have in the VCS then let us know exactly which files you're thinking of. Then we can take it from there. :-)
Related
All!
In our project team, people use either IntelliJ or Eclipse IDE depending on what they are comfortable with. Eacf of the IDEs have their own settings files. For instance, IntelliJ uses .idea and .iml and Eclipse uses .project, .settings, .classpath! While some other stack overflow thread says it's not needed to check in any of these files from either IDEs if you are using Maven, I'm unsure why that's the case. None of the threads say why using Maven does not warrant (some of) the settings, .project, .classpath be checked in?
Can someone help me understand 2 things
1) Why don't we need these files to be checked in when using Maven?
2) If we must check in (Assuming Maven is not used), how do we ensure that either IDEs work okay when checking out from source control and what to check in to ensure cross compatibility.
Thanks!
1) These files are not needed because bothe IDEs can import maven projects using the pom.xml file. So the pom.xml file is your single source of project description for both IDEs.
https://projects.eclipse.org/projects/technology.m2e
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/maven-support.html#maven_import_project_start
2) You see it right, it's hard to ensure cross-compatibility if you use only the native project files of the IDEs. Among many other things that's why it's encouraged to separate the build chain (Maven, Gradle, etc.) from the IDE. Also continuous integration systems can be configured more easily if a unified build tool is used so it's kind of a best practice to use one and keep it independent from the IDE.
In case you don't want to switch to maven now, check in the Eclipse .project and .classpath files, Intellij is able to understand them.
When I commit a web appliction to source control should I also include the .project & .classpath files ? I don't think it should make any difference either way as other users who use the project should have the same project settings ?
This is the sort of question that gets people bent out of shape in a debate that never ends. You basically have two camps:
Only put source code into the source control system. Each developer chooses their own IDE and manages their own project configuration. Setting up your IDE after getting source code from the repository will be tricky. If one dev changes project dependencies, they have to explicitly communicate that so that all other devs update their project configurations. There are some tools that try to address this problem, like a Maven plugin that will attempt to generate Eclipse project metadata from pom.xml, but all have their limitations. Groups that go this way favor the purity of not restricting developer choice in IDE over the convenience of having Eclipse projects across the team that just work.
Standardize on Eclipse. Put all Eclipse project metadata into source control. This includes .project, .classpath and the entire contents of .settings. Basically, the only thing that you don't want in your source control repository is content marked as derived in Eclipse. You can check that in right-click->properties. Taking this approach ensures that developers can get started coding immediately after getting the project from source control. No additional configuration required. Also, when one dev changes project configuration, the rest of the team will see the same change on next sync.
Choose the approach that makes the most sense for your team.
For ClearCase, including the .project and .classpath can make a difference when you are using the IBM ClearCase plugin for Eclipse.
That plugin will work better if it can rely on those (versioned) files being there, right next to the sources (as opposed as being in the Eclipse workspace, which doesn't necessarily contains said sources).
In general, nothing generated should go into repository. Those files are generally generated by IDE or maven. However, sometimes you may need to click a button or execute a command to get those generated.
i would include them.
The .project file have plugin info (e.g. maven, ant, pdt, wst, aspectj, findbug..). It is essential if it is not a plain java project.
.classpath contain the classpath. it is needed if you use jar files.
I would say that all files - including .project and .classpath - should go to source control, to ensure that everyone in the team has the exact same setup.
I'm working on an open-source cross-platform C++ project that supports Make and Xcode builds. I'd like to add an Eclipse project as well, but there seems to be no double-clickable way to import a project into Eclipse. Consequently, my "project" consists of fact that I have .project and .cproject files checked into the repository.
torc/
trunk/
eclipse/
??
sandbox/
.project
.cproject
...
src/
.project
.cproject
...
xcode/
torc.xcodeproj/
...
...
Suppose somebody downloads the code but doesn't use Xcode. They can build the code with Make, but many people will probably want to peruse the code structure and sources, and Eclipse would provide a great way to do that.
Unfortunately, the user may not be familiar with Eclipse or how to import projects, and I'd like to make things easier for them, not harder. I was hoping to provide something double-clickable or draggable that would get them started with minimal grief. Can anybody suggest a good way to do this? Or is there an alternate approach that would feel natural to current or prospective Eclipse users?
I am aware of this approach, using org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.core.headlessbuild, but that seems to work primarily with never versions of Eclipse and CDT.
I have an answer, but it's not very pretty.
You could create a workspace directory for your project in your repository and check it in with the project already added to the workspace. Then, you could create a script which launches Eclipse and tells it to use the workspace directory in the repository. (For example, eclipse -data ./eclipse/workspace.) You should make sure the workspace has been cleaned first because a workspace that has been built can contain quite a lot of extra metadata.
That said, this is not a great solution. Experienced Eclipse users will probably not want to use your workspace because preferences are stored in the workspace, and besides, if they see a .project and .classpath file, they're already going to know how to import it into their own workspace. People unfamiliar with Eclipse are likely not to have Eclipse installed at all.
I'm trying to develop a small project using Eclipse and the Google Web Toolkit.
It's a (small) group project so I want to use SVN.
So far I have created a GWT Project in Eclipse and added it to my SVN Repository.
The problem is that when I use 'compile' on the project, it breaks SVN's metadata and the whole war-directory is marked as broken. (Red Exclamation mark).
I then cannot commit and/or update - neither can I just ignore the war directory because of the web.xml / appengine-web.xml files which Eclipse complains about when they are missing... Cleanup also fails.
So far the problem -
Does anyone of you know how to properly set up a new GWT Project with SVN?
Which files need to be ignored? Which files can be committed? ...
A beginner-friendly solution would be great!
Thanks in advance
In the answer below I'm assuming you're not using Maven. I tried to answer generically as well so the below should apply to any version control system (I'm on Bazaar).
You want to commit the files which constitute the application source code (e.g. *.java files) and configuration metadata (e.g. *.xml files). Some (like me) also like to commit Eclipse project configuration (.settings, .classpath and .project), even though doing so might on occasion cause some inconvenience to other team members due to differing Eclipse setups. I think the convenience of not needing to guess which Eclipse natures the project has or what's supposed to be on the classpath is worth it (Maven helps even more, but that's a separate discussion).
You want to ignore the files and folders which are build products (and hence are temporary and reproducible by nature). For GWT apps developed in Eclipse using the Google Plugin for Eclipse these are typically war/WEB-INF/classes, war/WEB-INF/deploy and war/<module_name>, where <module_name> is the name GWT uses for the folder where it places your GWT module compiled into JavaScript/HTML. You might also want to exclude .gwt where GWT dumps log information during work in Development Mode.
Also in your project directory be sure to ignore the gwt-unitCache. This is where gwt stores a manifest of what units have been compiled for re-usability.
Hope this helps.
I created an Eclipse project and now I want to put it on my SVN repository. Which files should I put on ignore list? There are many files that I don't know what they are used for. There are folders like .history, .root, .safetable, .log, .settings ... and many .index files, also some .running files. Can I put all that to ignore list? Do you know which extensions/folders can always be on ignore?
Thanks.
The answer is very dependent on your project. Committing the source is a good thing however it'll force new developer to recreate the project environment which can be painful. If you are using Maven with the m2eclipse plugin committing only src and pom.xml is a good approach as it only takes a few minutes to recreate the Eclipse environment from src and pom.xml.
On the other hand it is ok to commit .classpath and .project but that also means extra work such as never using external jar directly but through variables or user library, etc.
If you have time to experiment, why not check in everything, have a colleague check out the project, and see what throws up errors? Anything that references paths outside the project is likely to fail if your colleague doesn't organize her harddrive the same as yours. Those things should be changed to reference variables, or not placed under version control.
Let your colleague build the project, run the IDE through its paces, and then sync up to the repository to see what changed. Files that are volatile, run time logs, and temp files should be omitted. Anything that makes it easier for another developer to setup the project and get running should be included. Taking time to experiment will help you gain a better understanding how your project is setup.
Basically, you want to avoid checking in anything derived from source (like .class files in a Java project) or anything that every developer would have to change for their local environment, like a file with absolute references outside the project directory. One approach I have used in the past for handling configuration files that require customization by developers is to include a copy of the file, usually with extra comments, with a .example extension. Make it clear in a README or other documentation which example files need to be customized and what the "real" name for the file should be. Also include he "real" file name in the svnignore list so it doesn't get checked in and overwrite everyone's local customizations.
To address your specific examples:
.history, .root, .safetable, .log,
.settings ... and many .index files,
also some .running
.settings is one you'll have to experiment with. If you have settings, such as code style or formatting guidelines, that all developers need to follow, then it can be handy to have those under version control, but some other settings may not be appropriate for all developers. The other examples are not familiar to me, possibly because they are associated with a type of Eclipse project I don't work with.
My first guess would be that any file whose name is starting with a dot should not be versioned. Most commonly such files refer to Eclipse settings which are not project-relevant.
Now, the .project and the .classpath files, in a Java project, are quite "project dependant" and I usually include them.
To get a more precise answer you should specify which project type you are working on.