[stchome]

When I added web project capabilities to my current project, ME changes the output directory (noted elsewhere that this is a bad “feature”) to WEB-INF\classes. When I go back into the project properties to move my compilation directory back to myproject\bin, it asks if I’d like to clear out the compiled files. I said yes, so it deleted the classes directory – which means it also deleted the files I had in classes that I wanted (my properties files).

Changing the output directory should not mean deleting my directory.

[Riyad Kalla]

Charles,
If you didn’t want the output directory cleaned why did you answer yes to it? “Cleaning” the output dir is standard in Eclipse, this is why you never want to put properties files and such directly in your output dir, but rather in the source tree in the appropriate location. Part of the Eclipse build cycle is to first copy out all non-Java files into the output dir (properties files, xml files, etc.) and then compile all the Java files.

[stchome]

Well, I said yes, because I didn’t want all the compiled code in that directory.
Since it wasn’t an output directory until ME changed it without asking having the properties files in that location wasn’t an issue.

[Riyad Kalla]

Since it wasn’t an output directory until ME changed it without asking having the properties files in that location wasn’t an issue.

Ahh, point taken. I will file an issue on this that we allow the user another step of intervention before ME changes the output dir.

[stchome]

One other thing – not sure if this is an Eclipse of MyEclipse issue, but the dialog box I got said:

which implies that only the generated class files would be removed, not the entire output directory.

[Riyad Kalla]

I will add this to the issue, thank you for the additional details.

[stchome]

Sorry if I’m beating a dead horse.
I added web project capabilities to a java project. I then removed those capabilities. I get this dialog:

When I click finish, it wipes the WEB-INF\classes directory of all files, except the compiled classes (because the output folder was changed when the web capabilites were added). Again, really bad given you get no warning here, and this time this is ME functionality.

[Riyad Kalla]

Charles,
I’m afraid the ‘cleaning’ behavior is Eclipse’s in this case. Granted out wizard does do certain cleanup things, but those changes will likely cause the project to get rebuild, which is then handled by Eclipse and default cleaning behavior will clean (erase) the output dir then rebuild all the source files.

Have you moved your properties files into your src dirs, or were they still in your output dir?

Also I got a note from one of the devs that this problem will likely be addressed when we address the much bigger issue here of ‘flexible project structure’ which will entail a major change to the core of MyEclipse and will happen hopefully soon (maybe not before 3.9, we’ll see).

[stchome]

@support-rkalla wrote:

I’m afraid the ‘cleaning’ behavior is Eclipse’s in this case. Granted out wizard does do certain cleanup things, but those changes will likely cause the project to get rebuild, which is then handled by Eclipse and default cleaning behavior will clean (erase) the output dir then rebuild all the source files.

Gotcha, that makes sense, since the output dir gets changed to a source directory, then gets cleaned…

Thanks much. I really hope you can get the flexible project structure into the next release, because this release has been really frustrating to use. I feel like I’ve lost all my JSP editing capabilities (well, because for the most part I have). Its frustrating and disappointing when things that worked so simply and well in previous releases stop working.

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