Bug 528255 - Make project configuration able to reference parent project configuration

[ppalaga]

Moved from https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=528255

Nowadays it is quite common to import a whole tree of Maven modules from one source repository at once. These modules naturally share many preferences, esp. those ones related to code style.

Currently, the only way to set e.g. a git repository wide Java formatter (that differs from the workspace default) is to do it one by one for each module. First this is infeasible in large project trees (just try it for https://github.com/apache/camel :). Second, the modules of such a tree come and go over time and it is impractical to watch for new modules and add the preferences manually.

So ideally, a new Preference scope should be introduced that would allow to set preferences for the whole tree of Eclipse projects.

Note that the root project of a tree, that typically is not a Java project should allow setting Java-related preferences so that its descendant modules can inherit from it.

[laeubi]

This relates to

• Support hierarchical project preferences eclipse-platform/eclipse.platform#89

[ppalaga]

Thanks for the link @laeubi!

I wonder why the linked issue is filed under Tycho? I thought Tycho was a build tool. What I am asking here is preferences at Eclipse runtime. Could you please explain that?

[laeubi]

I wonder why the linked issue is filed under Tycho? I thought Tycho was a build tool. What I am asking here is preferences at Eclipse runtime. Could you please explain that?

This issue is opend against m2eclipe and the referenced one is under eclipse-platform, so I don't see any Tycho here :-)