How do I use the Team Synchronizing perspective in Eclipse?
Author: Deron Eriksson
Description: This tutorial demonstrates how to use the Team Synchronizing perspective in Eclipse.
Tutorial created using: Windows XP || JDK 1.5.0_09 || Eclipse Web Tools Platform 2.0 (Eclipse 3.3.0)


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The Team Synchronizing perspective in EclipseSW is an amazing tool for comparing your local Eclipse project with the version controlled project in CVSW. To investigate how to use it, we'll start with the simple demo-project, shown below. Notice that the file icons indicate that the project hasn't changed since it was last checked out from CVS.

'demo-project'

I created a new class called AnotherDemo. Notice that AnotherDemo.java has a question mark on its icon, indicating that this file hasn't been checked into CVS (and hasn't been set to cvsignore, either). The > in front of AnotherDemo.java indicates that this file has changed since the last time the project was checked out from CVS, which makes sense since the file is a new file.

Created AnotherDemo.java

As a further addition to the project, I added a line to the Demo class. Notice that the Demo.java file now appears as >Demo.java, since the file has now changed since the last time the project was checked out from CVS. Also, notice that the CVS version number of the file is present next to the file name (1.1).

Modified Demo.java

Now that we're done with our modifications, I right-clicked the project and went to Team → Synchronize with Repository.

Synchronize with Repository

I clicked Yes to open the Team Synchronizing perspective.

Confirm Open Perspective

A comparison view of the local project changes with the changes that have appeared in the CVS repository version of the project can be seen in the Synchronize view. We can see that AnotherDemo.java is a new file that we have locally but that doesn't exist in the CVS repository. We can also see that a Demo2.java file has been checked into the CVS repository by another developer after the last time we checked out our local copy of the project from CVS, so this file exists remotely but doesn't exist in our local copy of the project. We can also see that we have made a change to Demo.java and another developer has made a change to Demo.java and checked in that change, so we have a conflict in that file.

Synchronize View

First, let's take care of AnotherDemo.java. This is the new file that we're going to check into CVS.

AnotherDemo.java

I right-clicked AnotherDemo.java and selected Commit.

Committing AnotherDemo.java

I entered a comment, 'committing AnotherDemo', and clicked Finish.

Commit

AnotherDemo.java has now been committed to the CVS repository. Since this file is now identical locally and remotely, the file now disappears from the comparison in the Synchronize view.

(Continued on page 2)

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