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I've recently re-organised my Eclipse installation directories, to cater for various flavours of Eclipse (Helios, Indigo, Juno), but then this caused a problem as the ".eclipse" directory (that lives in my home directory) has sub folders that identify the eclipse version but end with a suffix that I think identifies the install directory

for example: org.eclipse.platform_3.6.1_12345678

So with changing the Eclipse install directory, and then booting up Eclipse, a new subfolder was created and the knowledge of my plugins installed is lost.

Why does Eclipse do this ? And how can I manage Eclipse such that I can tie the 2 directories together so I am free to move installation folder without breaking anything?

Is there any good practices of managing multiple Eclipse installations, with respect to configuration ( plugins ), and workspaces ?

Alex
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    I don't know why you must be change the install dir - it is not a good idea in my mind. You can install many eclipse versions (one install folder = one eclipse). You can start all eclipses at the same time but you can't use the same workspace at the same time. If you need in all workspaces and eclipses the same configurations you can export and import this via file/export/preferences/all Is this what you are looking for? – Huluvu424242 Jan 06 '13 at 02:32

1 Answers1

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By default, eclipse always stores its local configuration in the user's home .eclipse folder. You can override the default though.

In the eclipse.ini file for each of your different versions, you can add the following JVM parameter (make sure you add this line below the -vmargs line)

-Dosgi.configuration.area=@user.home/.eclipse<version>

where

<version>

is whatever identifier you choose for that particular version of eclipse.

This should help keep the different configurations separate and prevent them from stomping on each other.

Hope this helps.

Scott Ellis
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