Maintaining Eclipse project include/lib paths in CVS

Question

Background:

Here at the office my group uses a common linux environment where we do our code development. Our code is kept in CVS. The latest releases of our various libraries are kept in a specific directory (ie /data/group_projects/lib). Our Makefiles/Ant builds all specify what libraries are needed. We use autoconf to create the makefile after checkout for most C/C++ projects. We've just got Eclipse (3.4) installed and are planning to incorporate it into our workflow.

Problem:

So, when I check out a project from CVS through the Eclipse interface and then I have to set up all of the library paths (and include paths for C/C++). For some of our projects, this could be a lot of work. Is there a good way to save these paths along with the code when I check it back into CVS?

Ideally, when the next person checks out the code in Eclipse, the paths (and anything else they might need) will automatically be set up and they will be able to compile straight away.

Efforts:

I know that the include/lib path info is kept in a .cproject or a .classpath file (C/C++ or Java respectively). I thought I could export this info through Export -> Preferences. The resulting epf file doesn't have any path data in it unfortunately. I tried directly adding the .cproject file to one of my projects (so I could then put it into CVS) but Eclipse really doesn't seem to want me to do that.

I am quite new to Eclipse (esp using CDT), but maybe the necessary path info can be pulled out of build.xml/Makefile automatically by Eclipse? There seems to be a bit of a disconnect in Eclipse between the buildfile/makefile and the jar/include files that the IDE uses for checking your code as you type it. Maybe I am missing something?? I'm planning to put some serious time into researching Eclipse over the next few days so hopefully the inner workings will become much more clear to me.

I've asked the guys here at the office but no one is much of an Eclipse guru. My searches haven't turned up much . . I did see a suggestion to add all external jars to Java -> Build Path -> User Libraries under Eclipse Preferences. For us, each user would have to set this up once but afterward all of our java libraries would be available to whatever project we decided to check out. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though I can do the same thing for CDT.

What would you suggest? Am I missing a setting or function of Eclipse? Or am I going about this the wrong way? Please let me know what you think. I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

Answer 1

You simply need to share the .project, .cproject and .classpath files through CVS. You can do this from the cvs command line, or select then 'Team/add file to version control'.

You don't need to add these files to the project explicitly: they are inherently part of it.

Obviously, if you do this, you need to make sure they are location-independent.

See:

eclipse wiki

Safari books

Answer 2

I've done this in Eclipse, and it's not too hard. You have to check in the .project and .classpath files. There are one or two places where Eclipse doesn't correctly automatically check out the files when you want to edit them, so when you get a read-only error you have to go manually do it, but for the most part it works.

The paths need to be all relative.

If relative paths is a problem, you can also take advantage of workspace variables in Eclipse. The developer sets their workspace variables appropriately on their machine (e.g., OPENGL_INCLUDE_PATH ), and then in the builder you can set the environment to pass that path along.