Eclipse project hiding src folder

Question

For some reason Eclipse has started hiding the 'src' folder in some but not all of my projects and I would like to get it back.

The files under src are still available under other generated views such as Java Resources and Deployed Resources but the actual 'src' folder is hidden from all views including Project Explorer, Navigator, and Open Resource (Ctrl+Shift+R). Not being able to navigate via Open Resource is particularly annoying.

Does anyone know why the folder has disappeared, and how to get it back?

I have a feeling I changed a setting somewhere a while ago not realising the side effects but am really struggling to how to undo this change. Other people on my team are unaffected so I assume it is a setting somewhere on my machine.

The projects in question are all Spring Maven projects using m2e. The two affected projects are both webapp/WAR projects but other webapp projects are unaffected.

Things I've tried to whittle down the cause:

• With and without the Spring Tool Suite plugin.
• Clean install of Eclipse JavaEE with no additional plugins.
• Deleting and recreating my workspace.
• Clean source checkout.
• Removing any .project, .classpath, .settings files from the checkout.
• Deleting and reimporting all projects via Maven.
• Disabling all Filters in Project Explorer and Navigator.
• Diffing the generated .project and .settings files between the projects with no obvious differences.

Software details are:

• Debian 7, 64-bit
• Oracle JDK 1.7u25 64-bit.
• Eclipse Kepler, Java EE version, Linux 64-bit.
• m2e 1.0 as supplied with Kepler

Answer 1

• right click on project

• select properties

• select java build path

• goto source tab

• click add folder

• select your source folder (src/main/java)

I would also add src/main/resources, src/test/java, src/test/resources

Answer 2

Answering my own question to help out anyone else who gets this since it has wasted a couple of days of my time figuring out the cause.

Someone on my team accidentally checked in a .git folder somewhere deep under src/main/webapp which triggers the problem when importing the project. Removing the stray .git folder fixes the problem.

I assume this confuses the EGit plug-in which ships with the Java EE version of Eclipse. We don't use Git so I had no reason to suspect it as the cause of the problem. No one else on the team saw the problem since it only shows up when re-importing projects.

Hope to submit a bug report to the EGit project at some stage since I can't think why it should ever hide the 'src' folder like this.