What does "Copy projects into workspace" mean?

Question

When importing a project into Eclipse, there is a checkbox "Copy projects into workspace". I want to know what does this mean. Do I need to select this?

Answer 1

Basically, you want to do this if you want to copy the files of the project you are importing under the workspace folder, and have two copies of the project on your computer at once. This may or may not be what you want to do. In my case it is not what I want to do, as I already have my projects placed in the proper and final location before I import them. My "workspace" folder remains void of project files. This is completely acceptable and is likely what a newcomer to Eclipse working on a test project will want to do. If you are working for someone else, you should ask your employer the setup protocol.

Answer 2

Every project in Eclipse is part of a workspace, which can be any folder, but usually developers keep the workspace folder as a parent to project folders. So, in this context, Eclipse is asking you, if you already have a workspace, whether you want to copy the project you are importing, to that workspace.

I will explain with an example: for my Android work, I have workspace folder called Android-<Product-Name>. In this I have library projects lib1, lib2, and the base Android project (called <product-name>) that uses those libraries. Hope this makes sense.