Use eclipse as svn client

Question

Running OSX.

I have used eclipse for years as a Java developer. I am now messing with all kinds of new technologies but still find myself using svn (don't ask its not my descision). Anyways I don't really like SVN command line as I find it almost impossible to sort through merge conflicts.

With that I was thinking about using eclipse (w/ subclipse plugin) as my SVN client whenever I need to do SVN type things. The one problem that I have found is that eclipse loves to create a .project file. I would never want to check this in as no one else is using eclipse. I know that I can add it to svn:ignore, but that has to actually commit that ignore to SVN as well, which I do not want to do either.

Anyway to create eclipse projects without the .project file. I know sounds dumb because I am sure that eclipse needs the .project file for all its projects. Would be nice just to create an SVN project (not Java project) and have eclipse leave off any other crap.

ideas?

Answer 1

There is no way to create an Eclipse project without the .project file (at least none that I know of), but you can tell Eclipse which files to ignore, as well.

Just go to Preferences -> Team -> Ignored Resources and add the pattern .project.

This setting is purely Eclipse-internal and does neither affect your global svn-ignores (defined in ~/.subversion/config) nor will it add any files to the repository.

Also, when checking out folders from SVN using Eclipse, make sure to create a General Project, not a Java Project, so the .project file is the only file Eclipse creates.

Answer 2

.project is actually not the only file that will be generated - depending on the "project natures" you add to a project. To really separate the project from the source folders, you'll have to create the project in a separate folder - say the workspace - remove the original source folder and add the source folders as external links - see: Project Settings/Java Build Path/Source.