How to not check in Eclipse specific project files?

Question

I don't want to force people into using a specific IDE for development, so our projects look basically like this:

• SomeProject
  • src
  • lib
  • build.xml

No IDE specific files whatsoever.

However, many people prefer Eclipse and it is their valid complain that it is annoyingly difficult to set up an Eclipse project from an Ant build file if that project is checked into a VCS. That's a very old bug, so I don't really expect it to be fixed soon.

I don't want all those weird Eclipse project files in the project root, but if it was the only way, I would accept having the eclipse project files in a subdirectory "eclipse". I thought Eclipse's linked resources were capable of just that, but I was wrong, it doesn't really work.

How do you solve this problem? Are you checking in the .settings directory. etc. into your project's root?

Answer 1

If I don't want certain files in the CVS or SVN I add them to the ignored files (Context menu > Team > Add to SVN/CVS ignore). You might have to enable seeing them in the Package Explorer (little triangle in the upper right corner of the view > Filters > uncheck .* resources). I usually check them in though, as given they are hidden files they don't disturb much if you don't need them but are really useful if you do.