I've got eclipse workspaces for my full time job and my home test work that are both set up with ivy (and using ivyDE).
However, I'm finding that I'm getting strange behaviour and conflicts between the different workspaces - issues like not being able to find certain dependencies, or not compiling etc.
Is there a way in ivy or ivyDE to set the home .ivy2 directory so that I can split my workspaces? At the moment, I'm alternating different directories for my .ivy2 cache.
I think you're looking for the caches directive in your ivysettings.xml file
You're not clear on what sorts of errors you're experiencing. Biggest problems I've experienced have been fire-walling and the use of a corporate maven repository that is unavailable when building code at home.
Caches should not be relied upon as the master copy of your dependencies. Your cache needs to be periodically refreshed to ensure that all dependencies are being resolved correctly (This problem can hide build errors)
I suspect you might also be trying to port jars between work and home by pre-populating a cache? I used to do this until I learnt how to build a local repository (See Building a Repository) to hold my corporate dependencies that are unavailable from public maven repositories.