2 Eclipse versions with same workspace

Question

I currently have Eclipse Ganymede running on my system. I wanted to install Eclipse Indigo and connect it to the same workspace (and then remove Eclipse Ganymede). Will this work OK or should I recreate all projects?

Answer 1

In theory it should work. In practice, I'd suggest to create a new workspace for the Indigo and re-create or import projects.

Here's why. Ganymede is a pretty old version of the Eclipse platform, actually it's 3 major releases earlier than Indigo, so you may expect many of the configuration files to have changed formats. Though Eclipse guys struggle to keep backwards compatibility, it could be that something stopped working between 3.4 (Ganymede) and 3.7(Indigo). I don't think they run such tests..

Another reason is that while you use the workspace, Eclipse tend to keep store some meta-data files, caches, etc. in the workspace, and it could forget to delete obsolete ones when you use a new version. So I personally prefer to make a clean workspace for the new Eclipse release.

One more reason for doing this is that after use a workspace in a newer version of Eclipse, it may update workspace metadata and you may not be able to use an older Eclipse version with this workspace anymore. So making a new workspace would allow you to use the old Eclipse with old workspace as if nothing has happened.

After all it's not a big problem to export/import all what you need:

• Workspace/platform settings.

Export: File->Export->General->Preferences;

Import: File->Import->General->Preferences;

• Projects.

Import: File->Import->General->Existing Projects into Workspace

Choose your old workspace folder in the "Select root directory". You would probably want to set a "Copy projects into workspace" checkbox. Also see an eclipse help article on importing.