Eclipse Workspaces What for and why

Question

I have seen  read and thought of different ways of using workspaces  per project  per application  multi-asseted or not   per program language  per target  web-development  plugins      and so on  and I am still doubting what the best approach is   Can anyway give an elaborate  but not a page long insight into this   This involves a lot of sub-questions  so to speak  and I don t know all the specific sub-questions I should ask  because I am not sure I don t know all the aspects of eclipse  and workspaces   but I ll try to give an example of what I am looking for     What for   What did eclipse development mean it to be used for   What do other most people think  What do you think         Why   Are there configuration conflicts vs  sharing merits  Any filespace reasons  Performance           Oh  and I am speaking of the minimum use case for a developer that uses different languages and protocols  and NOT necessarily all of them in one project  E g  php  javascript and xml for some projects  C  for others  java and SQL for still others  etc        Edit 2012-11-27  Don t get me wrong  I don t doubt the use of   workspaces  I just want to use it as it is meant to be or otherwise if   anyone would think it better   So  what for   means  What s the best use  And    why   actually targets on the  what for    in other words  tell me the reasons   for your answer

User · Answer

Although I ve used Eclipse for years  this  answer  is only conjecture  which I m going to try tonight    If it gets down-voted out of existence  then obviously I m wrong   Oracle relies on CMake to generate a Visual Studio  Solution  for their MySQL Connector C source code   Within the Solution are  Projects  that can be compiled individually or collectively  by the Solution    Each Project has its own makefile  compiling its portion of the Solution with settings that are different than the other Projects   Similarly  I m hoping an Eclipse Workspace can hold my related makefile Projects  Eclipse   with a master Project whose dependencies compile the various unique-makefile Projects as pre-requesites to building its  Solution     My folder structure would be as  Rafael describes    So I m hoping a good way to use Workspaces is to emulate Visual Studio s ability to combine dissimilar Projects into a Solution

User · Answer

I ll provide you with my vision of somebody who feels very uncomfortable in the Java world  which I assume is also your case  What it is A workspace is a concept of grouping together   a set of  somehow  related projects some configuration pertaining to all these projects some settings for Eclipse itself  This happens by creating a directory and putting inside it  you don t have to do it  it s done for you  files that manage to tell Eclipse these information  All you have to do explicitly is to select the folder where these files will be placed  And this folder doesn t need to be the same where you put your source code - preferentially it won t be  Exploring each item above    a set of  somehow  related projects   Eclipse seems to always be opened in association with a particular workspace  i e   if you are in a workspace A and decide to switch to workspace B  File  gt  Switch Workspaces   Eclipse will close itself and reopen  All projects that were associated with workspace A  and were appearing in the Project Explorer  won t appear anymore and projects associated with workspace B will now appear  So it seems that a project  to be open in Eclipse  MUST be associated to a workspace  Notice that this doesn t mean that the project source code must be inside the workspace  The workspace will  somehow  have a relation to the physical path of your projects in your disk  anybody knows how  I ve looked inside the workspace searching for some file pointing to the projects paths  without success   This way  a project can be inside more than 1 workspace at a time  So it seems good to keep your workspace and your source code separated    some configuration pertaining to all these projects   I heard that something  like the Java compiler version  like 1 7  e g - I don t know if  version  is the word here   is a workspace-level configuration  If you have several projects inside your workspace  and compile them inside of Eclipse  all of them will be compiled with the same Java compiler    some settings for Eclipse itself   Some things like your key bindings are stored at a workspace-level  also  So  if you define that ctrl tab will switch tabs in a smart way  not stacking them   this will only be bound to your current workspace  If you want to use the same key binding in another workspace  and I think you want    it seems that you have to export import them between workspaces  if that s true  this IDE was built over some really strange premises   Here is a link on this  It also seems that workspaces are not necessarily compatible between different Eclipse versions  This article suggests that you name your workspaces containing the name of the Eclipse version  And  more important  once you pick a folder to be your workspace  don t touch any file inside there or you are in for some trouble  How I think is a good way to use it  actually  as I m writing this  I don t know how to use this in a good way  that s why I was looking for an answer     that I m trying to assemble here   Create a folder for your projects   projects  Create a folder for each project and group the projects  sub-projects inside of it   projects proj1 subproj1 1  projects proj1 subproj1 2  projects proj2 subproj2 1  Create a separate folder for your workspaces   eclipse-workspaces  Create workspaces for your projects   eclipse-workspaces proj1  eclipse-workspaces proj2

User · Answer

The whole point of a workspace is to group a set of related projects together that usually make up an application  The workspace framework comes down to the eclipse core resources plugin and it naturally by design makes sense    Projects have natures  builders are attached to specific projects and as you change resources in one project you can see in real time compile or other issues in projects that are in the same workspace  So the strategy I suggest is have different workspaces for different projects you work on but without a workspace in eclipse there would be no concept of a collection of projects and configurations and after all it s an IDE tool    If that does not make sense ask how Net Beans or Visual Studio addresses this  It s the same theme  Maven is a good example  checking out a group of related maven projects into a workspace lets you develop and see errors in real time  If not a workspace what else would you suggest  An RCP application can be a different beast depending on what its used for but in the true IDE sense I don t know what would be a better solution than a workspace or context of projects  Just my thoughts  - Duncan

User · Answer

Basically the scope of workspace s  is divided in two points   First point  and primary  is the eclipse it self and is related with the settings and metadata configurations  plugin ctr   Each time you create a project  eclipse collects all the configurations and stores them on that workspace and if somehow in the same workspace a conflicting project is present you might loose some functionality or even stability of eclipse it self   And second  secondary  the point of development strategy one can adopt  Once the primary scope is met  and mastered  and there s  need for further adjustments regarding project relations  as libraries  perspectives ctr  then initiate separate workspace s  could be appropriate based on development habits or possible language frameworks  behaviors    DLTK for examples is a beast that should be contained in a separate cage  Lots of complains at forums for it stopped working  properly or not at all  and suggested solution was to clean the settings of the equivalent plugin from the current workspace    Personally  I found myself lean more to language distinction when it comes to separate workspaces which is relevant to known issues that comes with the current state of the plugins are used  Preferably I keep them in the minimum numbers as this is leads to less frustration when the projects are become    plenty and version control is not the only version you keep your projects  Finally  loading speed and performance is an issue that might come up if lots of  unnecessary  plugins are loaded due to presents of irrelevant projects  Bottom line  there is no one solution to every one  no master blue print that solves the issue  It s something that grows with experience   Less is more though

[eclipse] Eclipse Workspaces: What for and why?

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