CODEWITHSUNDEEP
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Anastasius Vivaldus
Anastasius Vivaldus

Reputation: 325

What makes a dir a project in Eclipse?

(Java 101 -- probably so simple a question that I can't find an answer because everyone assumes it's so obvious.)

I'm using eclipse. I went to open what I thought was a project. I did not realize that, in fact, it was a directory with several projects in it. As a result, eclipse iterated through and opened each of them as separate projects in my Package Explorer panel. That got me thinking: on what basis did eclipse decide that the root directory was NOT a project, and that the individual dirs within the root directory were projects?

EDIT: Thanks everyone for their answers so far, but I'd still like to have something clarified. OK -- if I create the project in eclipse then it will add a .project file (and other IDEs might add their own convention files), but what happens if I did not create a project in an IDE -- it's just dirs and plain source files; would eclipse (or any IDE) thereby be able to discern that a given dir is a 'project'?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 117

Answers (3)

greg-449
greg-449

Reputation: 111142

The presence of a valid .project file in a directory makes it an Eclipse project. If there is no .project file Eclipse will not recognise this as an Eclipse project.

Package/Project Explorer don't normal show files starting with '.' so you won't see these files unless you change the Explorer filter settings.

The .project is an XML file which contains the basic details about the Eclipse project. It contains things like the project 'nature' which says that it is a Java project or a Plug-in project or whatever.

The most basic .project for a 'general' project looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<projectDescription>
    <name>General Project</name>
    <comment></comment>
    <projects>
    </projects>
    <buildSpec>
    </buildSpec>
    <natures>
    </natures>
</projectDescription>

A Java project looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<projectDescription>
    <name>Java Project</name>
    <comment></comment>
    <projects>
    </projects>
    <buildSpec>
        <buildCommand>
            <name>org.eclipse.jdt.core.javabuilder</name>
            <arguments>
            </arguments>
        </buildCommand>
    </buildSpec>
    <natures>
        <nature>org.eclipse.jdt.core.javanature</nature>
    </natures>
</projectDescription>

which adds the Java nature and the command for building Java code.

Different project types may add other '.' files. For example, a Java project will have a .classpath file containing the Java classpath settings.

Upvotes: 2

dchi
dchi

Reputation: 19

In this case, you need to go one level deeper and set the root directory as an individual project within the original directory. The .project and .classpath files in a project are how Eclipse determines if a directory is a project.

Upvotes: 0

wiomoc
wiomoc

Reputation: 1089

Eclipse actually creates invisible files containing metadata about the project

Upvotes: 0

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