Workspace or Working Sets

[Mark Spritzler]

I have always had an issue with this "workspace" concept. I like my IDEs to make a project and the project has modules. But Eclipse does things differently.

So my question is which is the preferred mechanism when wanting two separate "projects" To give an example I have two sets of lab projects for two different classes. So when I am teaching one class, I want my Eclipse to only show those lab "modules" for that class. I have achieved this with Working Sets, so I have all labs for all classes in one workspace and just change the working set to show the particular class I am teaching.

This obviously works, but I feel it is too many projects in one workspace and if both labs have a project with the same name, it will only allow one of them to be imported. I could have two workspaces, which might also allow me to have multiple versions of Eclipse on my machine, in case the different classes use different Eclipse versions. Which does happen.

I could also just switch workspaces to get the complete separation of classes.

What do you guys think?

Thanks

Mark

[David Newton]

Why not just double-click on the project in question ("Go Into")?

In any case, personally I'd use two workspaces, one for each class, unless the classes were so similar that I didn't care. I don't see any real difference between workspace/projects and projects/modules other than semantic. I don't like Eclipse's versions of workspaces because it's too difficult to move settings between them, but other than that, the latest Eclipse works for me quite nicely.

[Mark Spritzler]

David Newton wrote:Why not just double-click on the project in question ("Go Into")?

Not sure what you mean there?

I have now both solutions and I think the separate workspace is the cleanest. The problem I have is I want it to be clean, and not overlap. Because there might be different versions of say Hibernate in the two classes, and it will only allow one to be there. Meaning we have a project called repository that has the shared jars, and both classes have different versions of the same project, and Eclipse will only allow one repository project in a workspace.

Mark

[David Newton]

If your goal is to just show project-related files, you can "go into" a project (the right-arrow in the project view tab icons, or double-click depending on version/settings) and the project view will now contain just those files. The left arrow will take you back.

[Peter Johnson]

I have several workspaces, each dedicated to a different task. Each workspace contains multiple projects that are in some ways related (conceptually, if not physically). For example, I have one workspace for quick demo apps; there is no relationship between any of the apps. I have another workspace for the sample code for JBoss in Action. I have several workspaces where I keep work-related projects for. Etc.

In some cases I have multiple Eclipse installations, usually because I want to use different groups of plugins.

I also tend to export my Eclipse preferences so that I can import them into another workspace since the preferences are workspace specific.

[Mark Spritzler]

Thanks Peter. That is what I was looking for. Since I teach mulitple different classes, the student labs need to be separated, especially when they have a couple projects shared, and use different versions of Eclipse, and also different third party jar versions of the same jar. Hmmm, I guess I would need an OSGI Eclipse. ;)

Anyway, by having separate workspaces for each class, personal projects, and for fooling around, it keeps it cleaner in my mind that working sets. Especially in wiping out directories etc.

Thanks

Mark