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Running multiple versions of Eclipse

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I don't know if this is the right forum for this, but here goes...

I'm currently on the old Kepler version of Eclipse. This is due to supporting several projects that use the Jigloo swing design tool. Jigloo was incompatible with subsequent releases of Eclipse and the company making Jigloo went out of business. At this point I'm not going to port those projects to a different swing design tool. Kepler + patch was at least able to run Java 8.

In the mean time I want to move ahead with Java 9 development on more recent projects and Kepler doesn't support that, meaning, I should upgrade to the latest version of Eclipse.

Other than Jigloo, the other plugins  I use are: Subclipse (Subversion), and Maven.

So, what is the best way to go back and forth between two versions of Eclipse? Kepler configured for Java 8 and the newest one configured for Java 9.

Would I end up needing separate Subversion repositories?

Could I open up some of my Java 8 (non-Jigloo) projects in both versions of Eclipse (but not at the same time)? Or will the .settings stuff get stomped on by the newer version?

Would it even be possibile to run both Eclipse versions simultaneously?

That's all the questions I could come up with. Any other questions I should be asking?

Thanks.
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What OS are you running? Since you can usually simply unzip the Eclipse installation into a directory, and the launcher is in that directory, why can't you create two desktop launchers each with a different PATH to an Eclipse installation? That would be easy enough, then you can try out the other things you are asking about.
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Windows 10.

I'm guessing that the new Eclipse will clobber the .settings and .svn  stuff. So if I'm going to test it I guess I'll have to backup first (?) just in case.
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Don't you get a request for a workspace name every time you run a new version of Eclipse? If you use a different workspace directory, won't that create new svn repositiries etc? But, yes, you shou‍ld definitely back everything else up, or at least copy the entire directory.
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I've copied my D:\srcjava working directory to a new D:\srcjava2 directory.
I've installed Eclipse-Oxygen.
When I ran Oxygen for the first time it asks for a working directory and I gave it D:\srcjava2. It said that it would update the working directory to the latest version but that would make the oder version of Eclipse not work with it. This is OK because it's a copy and I still have my old working directory that I can use with Kepler.
So far, so good.

Now, what do I do with my Subversion repository?
I could start with a new empty repository directory and add each Oxygen project to it. This seems safest in terms of isolating my old Subversion repository from this one. Downsides: lots of manual effort, I'd loose any edit history (I could possibly live with this), and what about the .svn directories residing in my new D:\srcjava2 working directory? Do they still refer back to the old repository?

Is there a way to clone my old repository to a new one so that I retain edits and that the new cloned repository only refers to my new working directory and not my old working directory?

I've done some googling for subversion topics on this but none that I found explains it in a way that gives me confidence that I'm choosing the right svn commands.
There's an export and import ability. Would that disassociate my old working directory?
There's also mention of dump and load.
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Why do you need a new repo for Oxygen?
Why not branch your projects as needed?
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Seems to me you could point both Eclipse versions at the same Subversion repository. No? I would have thought that would be the most reasonable thing to do, too, especially in the face of the downsides you identified.
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Paul Clapham wrote:Seems to me you could point both Eclipse versions at the same Subversion repository. No? I would have thought that would be the most reasonable thing to do, too, especially in the face of the downsides you identified.


I think you're right. It's been a long time since I set up Subversion and I had to think it through. I was also wondering if Oxygen modified the projects in any way when it upgraded the working folder, but appears not to be the case. So ... onward I go unless I hit a stublling block.
Thanks for your input.
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