Eclipse and Gradle classpath out of sync: cannot be resolved to a type

Question

We are having a frustrating problem with our Eclipse workspace. Here is a high-level example of what is happening:

ProjectA
-- src/main/java/...
-- build.gra

Answer 1

One source of such problems can be letting Gradle generate the Eclipse project metadata/setup files (what you get by running gradle eclipse). I know that the Maven and Gradle teams really want their tool (Maven or Gradle) to generate that stuff, but they notoriously do a less-than-ideal job of it. For example, the last time I used Gradle it configured the .classpath to use a hard-coded JRE library path instead of the preferred Execution Environment. That kind of poor job of generating files makes for developer headaches.

Instead, the Eclipse recommendation is to manually configure your projects (for the most part), only letting Gradle manage its Classpath Container, then checking in the Eclipse .project, .classpath, and .settings files/folders in to your SCM (svn, git, etc.). That way, the process of checking out a project into a workspace is automatic and does not require running gradle eclipse or mvn eclipse:eclipse all the time.

That's the way that Eclipse projects were originally designed and intended to be managed, and it works very well. I've worked with setups like that on very large projects (100+ separate projects in Eclipse and dozens of developers). It also cuts down on the number of steps to go from zero to running app.

This is one of those philosophical differences between Maven/Gradle and Eclipse; when it comes down to it, IMO, the IDE should manage it's stuff and the build/dependency tool should just stay out of the way.

Try manually getting things just right in your project configuration and then checking in those files - see if it doesn't relieve the headaches your team faces in this area.