Software Engineering: How To Remove An Obsolet Workspace From Eclipse 3.1

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

How To Remove An Obsolet Workspace From Eclipse 3.1

Sometimes you would like to remove an obsolet workspace from Eclipse. Suppose you have made a test workspace to try some things out and now you don't wont and don't need it anymore.

If you remove the workspace from your disk, it'll still appear in the workspace launcher, when you start up Eclipse.

So, how do you get rid of it?

Ecplise is storing the workspace information in a preferences file called "org.eclipse.ui.ide.prefs". This file is located under "%ECLIPSE_HOME%\configuration\.settings" and contains a key named "RECENT_WORKSPACES". The value of this key contains a comma seperated list of workspaces, more precisely the path to the workspaces. If you delete one of the entries, it'll disappear from the workspace launcher.

What you have to do is the following:

exit Eclipse
delete the workspace from your disk
delete the path pointing to your obsolet workspace in the mentioned preferences file
start Eclipse

You shouldn't see the workspace anymore in your workspace launcher :-)

19 comments:

Anonymous said...: Thanks for the clear guidelines.

I was looking for the same under various menus and preferences, but could not find anything like "manage workspace".

Now I could delete my obselete workspaces :-).; 16 November, 2006 07:42
Anonymous said...: This works a treat under Windows for version 3.2 of eclipse.

I don't suppose you know how to do this on linux? The .settings file is hidden on linux and when I try to open the file, I get an error saying it's not a readable file.

Thanks.; 16 November, 2006 16:26
Anonymous said...: Thanks a lot.; 12 January, 2007 01:54
Anonymous said...: sudo or su to root to edit the file; 27 February, 2007 16:14
Anonymous said...: I was looking 4 that hardly... but now I got it.. Thanx a lot ;); 11 November, 2007 13:07
Anonymous said...: Hi

Thanks for your post. It was quite difficult to finde a how2 delete a workspce from Eclipse...

Cheers Guido; 16 January, 2008 16:31
Anonymous said...: Thank you! Exactly what I was looking for :); 25 March, 2008 17:46
Anonymous said...: "Manage Workspaces" is clearly a missing feature, but with your guide I was able to get rid of the "overlap"-problems - at last! :-); 29 March, 2008 07:50
Anonymous said...: Perfect! Thanks! Why doesn't Eclipse offer that in the Preferences? don't understand... it would be so easy.; 07 May, 2008 18:41
Anonymous said...: thankyou, it's really help !; 03 June, 2008 06:18
Anonymous said...: Thanks a lot. That helped to remove the workspace.; 17 July, 2008 17:59
Fandez said...: Thanks for this advice!
greeting from Spain; 26 September, 2008 08:34
Manuel Padilha said...: Thank you!; 12 May, 2009 18:05
Paul-H said...: thanks, exactly what I was looking for since a long time; 01 September, 2009 09:28
Dan said...: Thank you! One Google search and your post came up...much appreciated!; 22 January, 2010 02:15
Bala said...: I guess the tip is not working for eclipse3.4; 10 December, 2010 07:30
Steve said...: For me, my installation wasn't using %ECLIPSE_HOME%\configuration\.settings. I'm on 3.6.1, however I did finally find the correct configuration file under a ~/.eclipse directory.

Thanks for helping me get rid of an annoying workspace reference.; 23 February, 2011 21:21
Anonymous said...: thanks. that was good!; 06 October, 2011 13:43
Anonymous said...: thanks a lot.......for your post :D; 05 December, 2011 06:11