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Simply from a user's standpoint I wish there was an easy way to import/export ALL of my settings/profile/plug-ins/source-lookups/views/etc. to another installation. I realize this is a very broad and cumbersome scope and request. Maybe have a manager UI that a user could pick and choose what to include in the personal 'profile' that could easily be plugged in to another installation. The best example is when I upgrade (at every milestone) I backup my current installation and unzip a clean install and have to go through horrendous amounts of reconfiguring and updating. Another example is that with this I could sit at any machine and (ideally) just one-click that installation to look and behave (Views, Key Bindings) just like the one I'm used to. I don't know all the internals of the eclipse platform, but it seems to be possible, albeit difficult. I'm sure this would be enjoyed by many more besides myself and should be considered. I know you can import/export some things (only Code Style->Formatter comes to mind), so this issue must have been visited before. Is the entire scope too big and complicated? Is it a matter of 'as soon as someone writes it'? I'll be glad to help in any way I can. Thank You
I know this affects more than just platform UI, but platform UI seems like a starting point for investigation. Feel free to reassign though..
This can currently be done by copying your metadata over if you want to do this now.
There are currently no plans to do further work on this.
We see this as an important feature for our commercial product as well and am surprised this is being seen as an acceptable deficiency. If the user can simply copy over the metadata over to the new workspace, why can't Eclipse be smart and kind enough to do that for the user (on request). After all, we Eclipse developers are very familiar with the metadata directory, but users of our commercial products aren't and shouldn't have to know it even exists. All they know is they don't want to lose their preferences when they create a new workspace. As Mike pointed out, the user can make a significant investment in customizing what he thinks is simply "the IDE". He's then quite disappointed to see that what he customized was a particular workspace. Expecting him to know to copy over an internal-use directory is unrealistic, and expecting him to perform the copy is onerous. With 3.7.1, we have the ability to copy over some of the workspace customizations, but we really need to allow the user to copy all the preferences and the perspective customizations.
