[tools-dev] Project-oriented development in Eclipse

["Michael Aars" <m_aars@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

My quandry:

I have been doing development for years and maybe this is the wrong way to 
think about dev now, but can someone help me out...

I do development that requires me to comein in the morning and make 4 
different workspaces based on builds created overnight.
  20050727_001-ProjectBlah-Config1
  20050727_001-ProjectBlah-Config2
  20050727_001-ProjectBlah-Config3
  20050727_001-ProjectBlah-Config4
  20050727_001-ProjectBlah-Config5
where each one of the configs above are a different combination of of 
environmental settings: like Java SDK, Application Server (Tomcat-Spring, 
Websphere, Jboss, etc), (Swing, SWT) and so forth.

Right Now:
I have a .bat file that sets up the major stuff like Java_Home, all the 
homes and classpath, etc.  Then I use a ant build file to create the bulk of 
the workareas above, things like lib jars, databases, new copies of 
application servers (don't want old app servers to hide changes or lake of 
changes), etc.

I've tried creating java projects from scratch and adding "environment vars" 
to massage the rest....doesn't work to well and is slow
I've tried running .bat file before eclipse.exe, but Eclipse seems to only 
take env from the system...not an option for me...I would spend most of my 
time in Windows changing system env vars.
I've tried making projects on existing ant build, but of course, I can't 
pull in the ENV vars for the build.xml to work right.


Questions:
Is there a new way of handling this in Eclipse?
Or is there a way to make Eclipse run a .bat to get basic defns. like 
workarea, and product config?
AND For any solution to above, I need to disseminate to other product code 
monkeys?
AND For any solution to above, I will also need to still be able to run 
products from commandline (ie.  the .bat and build.xml still need to 'work' 
from commandline)

I get nervous when my junior developers tell me they have an IDE working for 
our projects.  It normally means by miracle it works and they have no idea 
how or why it works and/or what to check into CVS, and SVN so others can 
use. ; )

Thanks for help on this.
-javatexan

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