Having recently started using Eclipse an initial gripe of mine was that there didn’t seem to be any way to tell the IDE how to identify different types of files, specifically there appeared to be no mechanism of identifying and excluding ‘non-source’ files such as derived or distributable files. This causes several annoyances one of which appears in the ‘Open Resource’ search function (CTRL + SHIFT + R); when executed this function searches the entire Workspace for files matching a given pattern, this causes any files which are duplicated during distribution to appear multiple times in search results, once in the source folder and once in the duplicated location.
This is annoying since it then becomes possible for a tired or hurried developer to accidentally select and subsequently modify the wrong (i.e. distributable) file, upon rebuilding of the project distributable this can lead to lost changes since this file will most likely be overwritten.
If, like me, you’ve been through the annoyance of editing your distributable files and then losing the changes you may be pleased to know that there’s a simple solution to this which is as follows:
- In the ‘Project Explorer’ view select a folder that you wish to exclude from search results.
- Right click the folder and select ‘properties’.
- Select the ‘Derived’ checkbox.
- Click ‘OK’.The contents of the indicated folder will no longer be included in subsequent ‘Open Resource’ searches.
Cheers,
EdD