Java Development

[Ted_Hopp]

I have been developing projects in Eclipse using the 4.2.1 component pack. I now want to develop a project using the 4.7.0 component pack. I created a new Eclipse workspace with its own BlackBerry project and workspace and set it to use the 4.7.0 component pack. When I switch back to the older workspace, the component pack is still set to 4.7.0 and I have to set it back to 4.2.1, at which point insists on cleaning all the projects. When I switch back to the 4.7.0 workspace, the same thing happens. This is not exactly a productivity aid.

Is there some way to configure things so each Eclipse workspace maintains its own component preferences?

[Ted_Hopp]

Bump

[cagdasgerede]

An idea (not so great):

Use 2 copies of eclipse. Copy/paste your eclipse directory (program files not the workspace).

Now you can set different JDE versions. 

[Ted_Hopp]

This sounds like it should work. I'll give this a try if there's nothing better. At 1.2GB per copy of Eclipse, though, and no shortage of target BlackBerry platforms, I might be shopping for a bigger hard drive sooner than expected. 

[cagdasgerede · Accepted solution]

Another idea much better than my previous one:

Under your eclipse directory there is a file which keeps your JDE location:

C:\eclipse-SDK-3.4.1-win32\eclipse\configuration\.settings\net.rim.eide.keys.Configuration.prefs 

This is what I have:

#Mon Aug 03 16:46:37 PDT 2009
WORKSPACE.USER.BUILD=true
eclipse.preferences.version=1
JAVA.SDK.HOME=
RIM.SDK.HOME=C\:\\eclipse-SDK-3.4.1-win32\\eclipse\\plugins\\net.rim.eide.componentpack4.3.0_4.3.0.13\\components\\bin
RIM.SDK.DOCS=C\:\\eclipse-SDK-3.4.1-win32\\eclipse\\plugins\\net.rim.eide.componentpack4.3.0_4.3.0.13\\components\\docs\\api

  

Make two copies. One pointing to 4.7, other pointing to 4.3 (see net.rim.eide.componentpack4.3.0_4.3.0.13 vs. )

#Mon Aug 03 16:46:37 PDT 2009
WORKSPACE.USER.BUILD=true
eclipse.preferences.version=1
JAVA.SDK.HOME=
RIM.SDK.HOME=C\:\\eclipse-SDK-3.4.1-win32\\eclipse\\plugins\\net.rim.eide.componentpack4.7.0_4.7.0.36\\components\\bin
RIM.SDK.DOCS=C\:\\eclipse-SDK-3.4.1-win32\\eclipse\\plugins\\net.rim.eide.componentpack4.7.0_4.7.0.36\\components\\docs\\api

When you want to work with 4.3, replace net.rim.eide.keys.Configuration.prefs  with 4.3 version. When you want to work with 4.7, then replace it with 4.7 version.

Hope it helps. 

[cagdasgerede]

Let me know if that worked for you.

[Ted_Hopp]

Works like a charm! Now I just have to remember all the steps (or write a script or something) to do all this switching (and also remember to not switch workspaces within Eclipse).

What a shame that RIM wrote the plugin to use a single, global setting like this. I think it qualifies as a design defect. In my ideal world, I would be able to independently set the build configuration (as well as have multiple build configurations, each with its own output folder) for each project in a workspace. But that's not available even in the JRE. A realistic hope would be that the plugin could keep the target platform on a per-workspace basis rather than globally. I hope RIM is working on a new plugin that includes this feature.