Set Environment Variable At Eclipse workspace level for all launchers?

Question

Can I set a workspace wide setting to add an environment variable to all future launchers created in the workspace?

Use Case

• Our unit tests require an environment variable to guide the test to certain resources.
• the variable varies with each version of our product

Options - modify each junit launcher with the environment variable - create start up script that sets variable and launches eclipse - set globally

Ideally, I'd like to provide a way for users to set it once per workspace.

Does eclipse have a place to set an environment variable for all launchers?

Thanks

Peter

Answer 1

Only option which I can think of is similar to yours where you can create multiple shell scripts(linux) or batch files(windows) and set it up there. for ex -

I am giving examples for windows environment and same can be done for Linux as well -

for windows-

eclipse.exe -DvariableName1=value1 -DvariableName2=value2

As you want to pass different variables to different workspaces, you can also pass location of your workspace as part of arguments.

eclipse.exe -data <your_workspace_location> -DvariableName1=value1 -DvariableName2=value2

You can create multiple shortcuts of eclipse.exe in windows and place them on Desktop (for quick access) if needed. Each shortcut may point to a similar variant of above command with different workspace and different variables.

Hope this helps. Happy coding :)

Answer 2

I have a different approach for doing this on windows. This solution allows you to store a large number of environment variables to one place and apply them globally inside eclipse.

1. I have gitBash installed already, and associated in windows to execute .bash files
2. I set up a /c/Temp/.env file with lots of environment variables in the format

export VARIABLE=my value

3. I create an eclipse_startup.bash script that looks like this (and pin it to my start menu).

echo setting up env
. /c/Temp/.env

echo starting eclipse
/c/Users/me/eclipse-oxygen/eclipse/eclipse.exe

It has the disadvantage that I end up with a bash window open with eclipse, and I have to restart after changing the environment. On the plus side, my complex application has lengthy environment files already, so I can simply load them in and start.