eclipse+bzr (Or: DVCS + IDE) - eclipse

I have some projects on bzr code repositories shared with colleagues.
Problem is, I really want to switch to eclipse in some projects, but I don't want to pollute the repository with the unnecessary metadata eclipse creates in its Workspaces.
Any idea how to keep Eclipse's metadata outside my bzr repo?
Adam

If you know the names of the meta files created, you could put them into your .bzrignore file in your repository's directory.
See this part of the bzr docs

All the main metadata in eclipse are in the workspace.
You project, meaning:
your .project file
your .classpath file
your .settings directory
your source files
should all be located elsewhere, within your main project directory.
All those files (except the .class files generated by the compilation) should be versioned.
See "Do you keep your project files under version control?" for more, but also:
What to put under version control?
When working with Eclipse, should I add the workspace to the source control?

Related

gitignore for folder of eclipse projects

I am working following a set of java swing tutorials, each is an Eclipse project, keep them in a workspace. I init a git repository in the workspace folder (mac), and upload to github. When I download this folder in another computer (linux), the projects are not recognized as such, and opening/importing in Eclipse fails. Says: 'Folder not recognized as project'. What is the best way to handle a collection of projects in git?
If you want to have all of your Eclipse project data across your machines, you will have to add the following files/folders to Git:
.classpath
.project
.settings (folder)
Make sure that these are not ignored in either your local or globale .gitignore files.
Ignore things like the bin and target folders, since they contain the compiled classes and shouldn't be added to Git.
Regarding the failed import: as #nwinkler writes, Eclipse looks for the .project and .classpath files so you need to add them (and the .settings directory) to your git repository.
Regarding .gitignore, I typically put the workspace stuff there (and then do import existing projects in eclipse after cloning):
That is,
.metadata/.plugins
.metadata/.lock
.metadata/.log
and then for each project, the bin folder
project_dir/bin
and any other generated files

Why is not recommended to have an Eclipse project folder as a Git repository?

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?")

Eclipse workspace and Git folder layout

I am migrating from Eclipse/SVN to Eclipse/Git and I am unsure what the best directory layout would be. I have looked at the Vogel/a guide, the Eclipse Wiki as well as the following threads: Is it better to keep Git repository inside or outside of Eclipse workspace? Should I store git repository in Home or Eclipse Workspace?
I am used to setting up eclipse like so:
~/projectA/workspace/.metadata
~/projectA/workspace/subproj1/.project
~/projectA/workspace/subproj2/.project
~/projectA/subproj1/.svn
~/projectA/subproj1/file1
~/projectA/subproj2/.svn
~/projectA/subproj2/file2
So the project holds all project related files i need. The workspace folder holds relatively little data like the local revision info, project descriptions and specific eclipse settings.
The subproj folder(s) hold all the source code but also the subversion meta info.
The subprojects are more (or less..) related but they all contribute to projectA.
The eclipse working directory is ~/projectA/subproj1, ~/projectA/subproj2, etc.
I am not completely sure if i could use a more or less similar layout with Git. Biggest difference would be the 'repo' dir.
~/projectA/workspace/.metadata
~/projectA/workspace/subproj1/.project
~/projectA/workspace/subproj2/.project
~/projectA/subproj1/.git
~/projectA/subproj1/file1
~/projectA/subproj2/.git
~/projectA/subproj1/file2
~/projectA/repo/subproj1
~/projectA/repo/subproj2
If i set it up like the following, do I still comply with the best practices as mentioned in the Wiki?
#eugener I would assume the following layout complies with the Egit manual?:
~/projectA/workspace/.metadata
~/projectA/workspace/subproj1/.project
~/projectA/workspace/subproj2/.project
~/projectA/subproj1/.git
~/projectA/subproj1/file1
~/projectA/subproj2/.git
~/projectA/subproj1/file2
I would suggest to comply with EGit Wiki simply because the the way Git works.
The main point of Git is fast branching and merging, which is accomplished in repository's workspace, location of which is fixed in the folder where your repo is. Actual repository is located one level down in .git folder.
When project in Eclipse is "shared" with Git all the files are automatically moved from Eclipse workspace where the project was created to the location of the git repo it was shared with. So project in Eclipse is just a shortcut. Branch switching replaces the files in Git workspace which is automatically reflected in Eclipse.

Egit Eclipse best practises (play framework 2,.0) project

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.

What Eclipse metadata files should be in the repository?

I'm working on a new project with a full ANT build. I use eclipse to write my code, and I would like others to be able to check out the project to have a full working eclipse workspace. I do not want to have specific user settings committed though.
What files and directories should I have in source control?
(I'd rather not just go grab a plugin - I prefer more control over what goes in the repository)
We just put .project and .classpath in our repository, and that's sufficient to make it work "out of the box" for new developers. I'd like to have other stuff (run configurations come to mind), but haven't figured out how.
We use Subversion, so I put these files in a separate directory and defined svn:externals on that directory to point to the actual code, leaving it unpolluted by IDE-specific files.
Per request in the comments, here are the external that we use. Nothing complicated going on here:
Properties on 'svn://dev/trunk/IDEs/eclipse/runtime':
svn:ignore
bin
.fbprefs
cobertura.ser
.settings
svn:externals
lib/bin svn://dev/trunk/lib/bin
runtime svn://dev/trunk/runtime