How to Clone an Eclipse Workspace

Question

I am wondering how to create new clean Eclipse workspace but having all settings from an existing one. Maybe something like cloning but without projects?

Answer 1

This plugin will help you: http://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/workspace-preferences-transferrer.

Select "copy preferrences" when switch to or create a new workspace.

Answer 2

Need to copy .Metadata that holds the properties of your workspace.

Answer 3

You can try copying the workspace/.metadata folder. It mainly contains plugin information, and it is possible that you don't have some of the plugins. The specific folder that contains important settings is .metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.runtime/.settings. See this article

Answer 4

My preferred method is to copy both the .settings folder and the .launches folder from the old workspace to the new workspace. This seems to do a more complete job than using the export preferences option. You can find both folders under your workspace starting at
.metadata\.plugins
The .settings folder can be found under the org.eclipse.core.runtime folder The .launches folder is under the org.eclipse.debug.core folder.

(Just one of many tricks covered in my two Eclipse Guided Tour video training courses on Pluralsight.)

Answer 5

Just copy the whole workspace on your local file system. That works for me because my new feature branch is got the same pom file and thus the overall build matches up. This way I don't need to import all the projects again.

Answer 6

No need to copy anything manually, use Workspace Preferences Transferrer - it works great. Here is the quote from the description:

Extends the File > Switch Workspace… command with the option to transfer all preferences from the current workspace to the other one.

Just search the Eclipse marketplace and install it from there.