I have been developing an Android app on a Windows machine. Now I would like to continue development on another Ubuntu 10.04 LTS machine. I would like to move between computers maintaining a recent copy of the project files on each computer. I am using SpiderOak to create a synchronization of the workspace directories of Eclipse which I am using for development. When the files were copied from the Windows machine onto the Ubuntu machine and I ran Eclipse, an error was presented that the path to the java sdk could not be validated and the path shown was the path relevant to the Windows machine.
Is there a simple solution to this? I can imagine that some files regarding the workspace specifics should not be transferred. Can I simply omit transferring the .metadata folder contained in each workspace created by Eclipse? I am not interested in synchronizing preferences/plugins/parts not essential to the operation of the app. Will excluding the .metadata from the sync create another problem in not transferring valuable information regarding the Android app being developed?
As long as I have my project source code on hand, I will never consider synchronizing Eclipse workspace directory for cross-platform development. The correct way is maintain your source separately (by separately, I means do not bind your source to any IDE on any OS, use version control system is always recommended if the condition allows), wherever your want to start development by Eclipse or IntelliJ, on Windows, Linux or Mac, get a copy of you source and import it into your IDE.
Generally, the only files that makes your project a Android Project are:
If you work within a team and use source control like SVN, these are the only required folders/files that need checked in to SVN, all others (.project, .classpath, .settings/, bin/, target/ and etc.) are not necessary. thoese are iteratively generated by IDE when import and build your project.
This applies to all three Android project type (Android Project, Libaray Project and Test Project), If you are familiar with other build tools like Ant or Maven, it may also helps you a lot to maintain cross-platform development.