[ome-devel] Eclipse metadata in bio-formats.git

[Curtis Rueden]

Hi everyone,

This is a question for those who use Eclipse to develop Bio-Formats code.

Recently, I added pom.xml files to the Bio-Formats source tree, so that
Maven can function as a parallel build system. This has the nice side effect
that it is very easy to import those projects into Eclipse, using the
m2eclipse plugin. This plugin takes care of generating Eclipse metadata
files (.classpath, .project, and .settings/*) to match the POM's metadata,
and keeps it up to date as project dependencies change. In particular, it
automatically switches between Project and Library (JAR) build path entries
when dependent projects are opened and closed, which is a very nice feature.

Unfortunately, bio-formats.git already has Eclipse metadata committed to the
repository. When using m2eclipse with Bio-Formats, these metadata files are
overwritten, and Git sees a slew of changes in the working copy. While it is
possible locally to instruct Git to ignore such changes (see
http://www.pagebakers.nl/2009/01/29/git-ignoring-changes-in-tracked-files/),
my preference would be to remove the Eclipse metadata files from Git
altogether, and suggest that people use the m2eclipse plugin to develop
Bio-Formats from within Eclipse. This solution has the added benefit that we
no longer need to keep our dependencies in sync between the Ant
build.properties files, the Maven pom.xml files, and the Eclipse .classpath
files, but rather only between Ant and Maven.

What do you think?

Thanks,
Curtis
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