Maintaining a common set of Eclipse preferences

Question

Whenever I switch workspaces/Eclipse installs I need to copy/redo the preferences:

• compiler settings;
• font sizes/families;
• code formatter;

Answer 1

You could of course export/import those settings.

The other approach is to enable project specific settings for some settings.

We have a very small Git repository with those kind of files:

• .settings/org.eclipse.jdt.core.prefs (compiler problem settings and formatter rules)
• .settings/org.eclipse.jdt.ui.pref (cleanup rules, common code templates)

The common settings are just copied/merged in each projects .settings directory, ensuring common rules amongst all projects, whatever the workspace.