I use eclipse with "external" projects - i.e. projects created from existing source.
Poking around in the workspace files, I cannot find any reference to these projects. My question is: how does eclipse keep track of these projects?
I'd like to be able to add such a project to the workspace automatically (by generating .project and .classpath files)..
[eclipse]\workspace.metadata.plugins\org.eclipse.core.resources.projects\
Your project can exist outside the workspece, but all eclipse-specific metadata are stored in that org.eclipse.core.resources.projects directory
In Eclipse 3.3: It's installed under your eclipse workspace. Something like: C:\eclipse\workspace.metadata.plugins\org.eclipse.core.resources.projects\
(if your workspace is in C:\eclipse\workspace).
Under that folder is one folder per project. There's a file in there called .location, but it's in binary.
So it looks like you can't do what you want, without interacting w/ Eclipse programmatically.
You can also have several workspaces - so you can connect to one and have set "A" of projects - and then connect to a different set when ever you like.
In Mac OS X, it is under workspace/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.projects