Opening an existing project is a straightforward concept, and as such you’d think performing the task would also be straightforward. Let’s see if it is.
Visual Studio
After firing up the IDE, go to File –> Open –> Project/Solution.
Then use the file explorer view to locate and select either the project or solution file you want to work with. That’s it.
Eclipse
After firing up the IDE, go to File –> Import.
Expand the general node, and select Existing Projects into Workspace. Click Next.
Browse for the directory in which your project resides, verify the project selection in the project list box, and click Finish.
And the winner is…
Visual Studio. This is clearly a case of killing an ant with a bazooka. I’m sure all the extra options that Eclipse presents along the way are useful in some situations, but not mine.
And you call that a comparison?
To quote Star Wars: You Have Much to Learn, Padawan.
much to learn indeed… how about “open eclipse” -> done… all your projects are just listed there in your workspace.
*sigh* more misinformation for the internet…
Well, I see that you are new to Eclipse. Typically projects are stored in a code repository and you don’t usually import them. The reason you have to import them is because eclipse uses workspaces, not simple projects. Must java products have more than one project. in addition a workspace stores more than just the project.
Instead of importing, you an do a “New Project” from existing source.
I am curious as to why “it doesn’t work in your situation”. Seeing that you have come from a .NET Web shop, i think i know why. (I have done MS stuff since ’94).
Not sure how VS.NET wins this. Because instead of a workspace, you might have projects all over the place with a solutions file. I had to fix this issue that one of our lead developers created the other day.
Keep practicing with Eclipse and try to think outside the VS.NET box.
Definitely new to the Eclipse scene. Working a bit more with Eclipse, I’m starting to see the advantages of the workspace abstraction, and am looking into it more to see how it really compares to Visual Studio’s file system approach. Thanks for the “New Project” pointer though, I see how that’s a bit faster than what I laid out originally.
I’m definitely looking at this from a Visual Studio perspective, which is what I’m used to. That said, I’m looking forward to broadening my perspective with some Eclipse goodness. Thanks for the tips!
Uhm… In your visual Studio example, once you click on “Project/Solution”, you have to go through the same steps as your Eclipse example: select file or folder location, drill down to .sln file, and click that.
I’m with you on that whole “import” thing, though. When I go to open a project, I am not thinking “import”. I’m thinking “Open”.
“Import” imples that something doesn’t exist yet.
That’s jsut a wording thing. And I’m a Netbeans user, so I don’t know if maybe I’m just blowing smoke outta my ….
Using this small comparision alone, you are judging Visual Studio as the best? Rest of all facilities provided by Eclipse are waste ?????
lol
Then I can call this as a tutorial for eclipse and Visual Studio and the tutorial is complete!!!!!
lol
wow, you’re dumb.
Coming from VS to Eclipse I have to agree: that Eclipse has no proper way to share the notion of a collection of projects between developers is really a PITA.
And many Java guys don’t even realize that this is major problem. Unbelievable.
Here is how it should work and what Visual Studio certainly got right:
1. You have a clean PC and just your IDE is installed.
2. Select an arbitrary folder and get all source files (including many projects in different subfolders) from the SCM for the product you want to build. This also gets you one file (the solution) that has relative(!) paths to the involved project files.
3. You start your IDE, open that one file (the solution) and the projects all load and everything just works. Done.
In Eclipse you have to do it this way:
1. You have a clean PC and just your IDE is installed.
2. You select an arbitrary folder and create your workspace there.
3. Then you get all source files (including projects settings) from the SCM for the product you want to build. This gets the individual projects in subfolders (components, tests). Unfortunately there is no list of projects available, because Eclipse only knows about workspaces and you shouldn’d check in workspaces. So your colleagues wrote a text file there that lists all the projects.
4. Now you manually have to import each project individually. You look at the list your colleagues wrote and import them one by one.
5. Done.
That it’s necessary to manually import these projects is beyond believe. In our small company we have roughly 200 of such products (components comprised of subcomponts) and each of them consists of 2-10 projects. With Visual Studio it’s no problem to get started on a project: get the sources, open the solution, done.
I’m shocked to learn that Eclipse doesn’t support a similar workflow.
Although the preceding comments have validity to one extent or another, and I am no Microsoft lackey by any means, I guess I’ll have to join the minority when it comes to IDEs, I find, as barebones says, Eclipse is like swatting a mosquito with a howitzer, for many functions. Also, the interface seems to be getting tarted up more and more each iteration, more so than VS. And that leads to un useful GUI organization and wasted work bench space. I very much dislike using many steps to perform simple tasks, and if a more experienced user comes along and shows me how to do the task with a keystroke that I had utterly NO KNOWLEDGE of prior, is that a failure of me, or of the IDE?