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I program in conjunction Eclipse(4 javascript) & PyDev. For example in one project, I opened 5 tabs with different files. Now I need to work with another project, but I do not want to then return to the previous draft to look over all the necessary files and open them again, with close existing ones. How easy is it to switch to a different project to see if there was something open, so it stays?

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Y dont u keep both the projects open.. Whats the need to close other project –  ScoRpion Nov 15 '11 at 6:58
He's not really writing about opening/closing projects, but files. –  Joël Nov 15 '11 at 8:37
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2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

What I understand is, that you want to stay focused on the work you are doing at the moment. And you have different contexts you want to switch between. There are at least three options to go with:

  1. Use different workspaces (with the same Eclipse installation). This is useful if there is no overlap between the 2, so each workspace represents a different kind of work and context to do. To do that, define 2 workspaces, and a shortcut or shell file to start the 2 eclipse instances for them. In windows these 2 may look:

    start-ecl1: c:\eclipse\eclipse.exe -vm <jdk> -data ws1
    start-ecl2: c:\eclipse\eclipse.exe -vm <jdk> -data ws2
  2. Use different windows inside the same workspace. So you share the same directory (== workspace), but divide your work be the physikcal window. You have only one Eclipse running, but are able to switch between the 2 contexts by switching between the windows.

    To do that, select from the e.g. package explorer view the menu entry Open in new window.

    As a variation of this, you can use instead different working sets for different contexts. For doing that, do the following steps:

    • In the package explorer, open the "Select Working Set" dialog.
    • Create there a new working set, and define which projects should be visible in that working set.
    • Give it a name, and select the working set then.
    • As a result, only the projects you have selected are visible in the package explorer.

    However, the editors that are open from not visible projects are kept open, so this goes not as far as the next option, using Mylyn.

  3. Use Mylyn and tasks to define the task at hand. The context will be built by Mylyn on the fly, and when you switch the tasks, Mylyn will switch the context (open editors, views, ...) for you.

    To get started with Mylyn, have a look at the videos at Mylyn get started

My personal opinion is that the last one is the most elaborate, the first one is good if the projects have nothing to do with each other. The second one is easiest to use.

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You can add to the second option to use WorkingSets to only show a subset of the projects in your workspace. –  Paul Webster Nov 15 '11 at 12:14
Nice idea. I will do that. –  mliebelt Nov 15 '11 at 12:32
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Mylyn is what you are looking for. If you search the internet there's a lot of tutorials available. One of my favorite is http://www.vogella.de/articles/Mylyn/article.html

Its basically an eclipse plug-in installed by default to some eclipse packages. If you dont have one you can install using this update site http://download.eclipse.org/mylyn/releases/latest

Hope it helps :)

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