What s in an Eclipse classpath project file

Question

We recently had an issue with an Eclipse project for one of our team members  Tomcat was not deploying JARs of the application    We eventually noticed the  classpath Eclipse file was not the same as for the team members where the project was OK  We replaced the  classpath file with one from a project that was OK and the Tomcat deploy was complete   Just out of curiosity and to know at what to look in the future if something is wrong  what is  inside the  classpath and  project files  What can I add in there  what does it all mean

User · Answer

This eclipse documentation has details on the markups in .project file: The project description file

It describes the .project file as:

When a project is created in the workspace, a project description file is automatically generated that describes the project. The purpose of this file is to make the project self-describing, so that a project that is zipped up or released to a server can be correctly recreated in another workspace. This file is always called ".project"

User · Answer

project  When a project is created in the workspace  a project description file is automatically generated that describes the project  The sole purpose of this file is to make the project self-describing  so that a project that is zipped up or released to a server can be correctly recreated in another workspace    classpath  Classpath specifies which Java source files and resource files in a project are considered by the Java builder and specifies how to find types outside of the project  The Java builder compiles the Java source files into the output folder and also copies the resources into it

User · Answer

Complete reference is not available for the mentioned files  as they are extensible by various plug-ins   Basically   project files store project-settings  such as builder and project nature settings  while  classpath files define the classpath to use during running  The classpath files contains src and target entries that correspond with folders in the project  the con entries are used to describe some kind of  virtual  entries  such as the JVM libs or in case of eclipse plug-ins dependencies  normal Java project dependencies are displayed differently  using a special src entry

User · Answer

Eclipse is a runtime environment for plugins  Virtually everything you see in Eclipse is the result of plugins installed on Eclipse  rather than Eclipse itself   The  project file is maintained by the core Eclipse platform  and its goal is to describe the project from a generic  plugin-independent Eclipse view  What s the project s name  what other projects in the workspace does it refer to  What are the builders that are used in order to build the project   remember  the concept of  build  doesn t pertain specifically to Java projects  but also to other types of projects   The  classpath file is maintained by Eclipse s JDT feature  feature   set of plugins   JDT holds multiple such  meta  files in the project  see the  settings directory inside the project   the  classpath file is just one of them  Specifically  the  classpath file contains information that the JDT feature needs in order to properly compile the project  the project s source folders  that is  what to compile   the output folders  where to compile to   and classpath entries  such as other projects in the workspace  arbitrary JAR files on the file system  and so forth    Blindly copying such files from one machine to another may be risky  For example  if arbitrary JAR files are placed on the classpath  that is  JAR files that are located outside the workspace and are referred-to by absolute path naming   the  classpath file is rendered non-portable and must be modified in order to be portable  There are certain best practices that can be followed to guarantee  classpath file portability

[java] What's in an Eclipse .classpath/.project file?

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