Publishing a common workspace setup

Question

I want to set up certain configurations and preferences in IBM RAD (or say eclipse) so that a big team will be able to use the set-up already done. this would reduce the inconsistencies and rework effort in the team.

Preferably I want to keep that in subversion.

Right now, when created a workspace in my personal desktop and added it to SVN, everytime my team mates check it out obviously the .metadata and other eclipse internal files change based on their input.

Is there a standard practice/process to publish a common workspace setting in RAD/Eclipse?

Thanks

Answer 1

There are probably 2 things that matter most when getting yourself or someone else a new workspace. Getting the preferences set up, and checking out the appropriate source code.

1a) you can set up a workspace, and then export all the preferences. That provides a eclipse preference file that can be imported into a new workspace

1b) use project specific preferences where possible, as those will get checked into your SCM

2) the projects you work on can exported to a Team Project Set File. That can be imported into a new workspace.

Check them all into a releng project in your SCM. In this context, a releng project is just a project that has all of the build information in it. Then a new workspace setup involves checkout out the releng project, and importing the PSF and the preferences file.