Eclipse eye for a Visual Studio guy

Question

Hello, trying to do some Android development, which means Eclipse, however, most of my experience is Microsoft tools (e.g. Visual Studio). My java experience is mostly either Blackberry dev in the JDE and some miscellaneous stuff back in the Java 1.0 days.

My question is this. In VS200x, there is a .sln (solution), .csproj (project), etc... What are the equivalent file extensions for Eclipse? Do they even exist? I am having trouble with the basics, like how does one load a project into a workspace.

Is there a tutorial for Microsoft refugees somewhere?

Answer 1

You need to use file import and then choose Existing projects into workspace. A .project file and a .classpath file will be created.

I find the Eclipse way of working to be incredibly frustrating having come from Delphi/JBuilder where a single project file held all your settings.

Make sure that you back up your workspace as well - there is nothing worse than recreating it when you are under pressure!

Answer 2

Have a look here for "An introduction to Eclipse for Visual Studio users"...

Basically, for Java program (I never done any Android development) the basic Eclipse configuration files for a project are a .classpath (defining the dependencies of your project), and a .project file, that contains all specificities to your project configuration. In addition to that, a .settings directory is created, which contains some configuration files for plugins activated on your project.

Edit:

Eclipse is the most used IDE for the Java development. However, the best IDE is JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA. I see that there is a plugin for it to develop Android applications (here). If you can affort this wonderful application ($249), you will not regret it! You may eventually try the free 30 days trial...

Answer 3

My 2 cents :

Make sure to version control your .project and .classpath. You may aslo want to use path variables to reference directory where the external dependencies (third parties libs) are located.

Answer 4

Are you doing it for fun or for commercial purposes? Because if money is involved, if I were you, I would really consider investing in IntelliJ, which is arguably the best IDE Java IDE out there, but unfortunately it is not exactly free. The Android SDK has some support for IntelliJ out of the box so it's not like you had to write all the makefiles yourself manually. If you liked Visual Studio, you would like IntelliJ, so why don't you download the trial version and have a look at it.

Just my 2 cents.