What is a Project

In order to see the contents of a specific directory on the disk, you need to define a project using various wizards.

Create a New Project

Menu File ‣ New ‣ DVT Project

The first time when you create a project, the Eclipse platform creates a .project file in the directory you specified, right before it presents the directory contents. This is the only operation the platform performs. It will not move or copy any files to your workspace from the directory you specified. It will just create the .project file.

Some plug-ins might create other information holders in the project directory. For example DVT creates a .dvt directory to store project level configurations specific to DVT.

Note

There are ways to create projects directly from a revision control system, for example from a CVS repository. As expected, in this case files will be brought into your workspace.

Import an Existing Project

Menu File ‣ Import… (> General ‣ Existing Projects into Workspace) If a project was created for a directory on the disk (a .project file is already there), you cannot create another project in that directory.

Instead you import an existing project into your workspace.

Automatic Create or Import

The DVT plug-in merges the create and import wizards. It automatically detects that a project already exists at the specified location and imports it. Otherwise it guides you through the project creation.