Is it possible for the team to use Eclipse installed on a shared network drive?
Our lead programmer likes to install the tools on a shared network drive to minimize upgrade effort. He recently installed Eclipse to a network drive, but when I launched it I got a window that says Workspace in use or cannot be created, choose a different one.
. After clicking OK, I get a window that gives me a dropdown menu with one item, workstation on his machine. Then I can go to the workspace on my machine, click OK and Eclipse continues to start and work fine. This second window has a checkbox labeled Use this workspace as the default
which I checked after browsing and selecting my workspace, but the next time I launch Eclipse it will return to the workspace.
Are we violating any assumption of what Eclipse is doing about installation? We're on a Linux network, if that matters.
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Set the total eclipse so that it cannot be changed by users accessing it. This should (if I remember correctly) force eclipse in Shared User, Hands mode and by default to save the settings for the user account.
Don't split up workspaces (or projects) - this will only break things horribly - use a different strategy like the correct version control system.
Perhaps this documentation will be helpful. "The configuration for this [shared] script requires the installation area to be read-only for regular users. When users start Eclipse, this causes the configuration area to automatically default to a directory in the user's home directory. Not accepted, all users will use the same location for their configuration area, which is not supported. " "
I would try to run Eclipse locally as well as over the network. Using a shared network drive can make Eclipse more painful than it sometimes is. The development environment should work for the developer, even at the expense of a slightly more complex setup.
Eclipse stores many settings, including a list of the workspace, in the installation directory (especially the "configuration" directory). It's hard to say how well a co-installation will work, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are a number of issues caused by "fighting" between the Eclipse instances running on different developer workstations.
To fix the specific problem you are having, you can set up a separate startup script that passes your workspace as a command line argument to Eclipse, bypassing the workspace selection dialog you see.
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