Force Eclipse to clean a project automatically before every run

Question

I'm looking for a solution that will force Eclipse to automatically clean a project before I run it (I'm talking about running a project using just Eclipse- no Maven, no Ant). For building I already have a Maven configuration, but sometimes I run the build directly from Eclipse as well and this is when I need that cleaning.

Answer 1

Shouldn't it be possible to have Maven and Eclipse use different class folders, e.g. /target for the Maven build and /bin for the Eclipse internal Java compiler? If so, you should be able to have 2 different launch configurations running the code from 2 different locations.

Second alternative: You can create a small Ant script to clear the target directory. That Ant script can be run from inside Eclipse, so a workaround is running the Ant launch configuration first and your Java launch configuration afterwards. To make this a one-step process, please install the launch groups feature from Eclipse CDT (you only need that small feature, not the whole CDT!), then you can create a "batch" like launch configuration from the other two launch configurations. Now everything is inside Eclipse with a single launch configuration!