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Eclipse IDE; Open in current window / instance?


I've been using Eclipse for about a week now and I'm loving it.. great software for the 'price'. :P However, I'm having a few issues getting started.

The most annoying, so far, has been opening files from outside of Eclipse, and having them set to open w/ Eclipse. When I open a file from the file-explorer or an external application (WinSCP for instance), Eclipse seemingly attempts to open an entirely new instance itself rather than opening the file within a currently running instance. Of course, because this is the case, Eclipse errors out w/ 'The workspace is currently in use. Please select another' (or whatever it says).

Is there a configuration option, or an argument that I can use when opening a file externally that will simply use the currently open instance of Eclipse?

Thx in advance! :)


Solution

  • The easiest way to open external file in the current Eclipse is to drag-n-drop it to the tabbed area where your files are displayed. You should consider that Eclipse is seriously geared towards using files as part of a project and opening random file with Eclipse is certainly possible but not encouraged. To your question - since Eclipse runs in Java if you attempt to use eclipse.exe to open a file then script will always try to open a new instance, I don't know if what you want is actually doable