How to make eclipse refer to workspace in the same folder as exe file?

Question

How to make eclipse refer to workspace in the same folder as eclipse.exe file without asking me every time. I use eclipse on usb stick on several computers (different labs around campus + my own laptop), and drive letter always changes, so is there a way to make eclipse... more portable?

Answer 1

See this answer about starting Eclipse with a specific workspace

There is a command-line argument -data you can give Eclipse for the location of the workspace. You could create a batch file called 'runeclipse.bat' and give it the current directory as the location of the workspace. I would create a subdirectory named 'workspace' though.

eclipse.exe -data .\workspace

A better idea would be to edit the eclipse.ini, which is in the same directory as the executable, and put the -data argument there. Make sure the -data argument appears before any JVM arguments

For example, here is my eclipse.ini file

-startup
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.1.0.v20100507.jar
--launcher.library
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_1.1.1.R36x_v20100810
-showsplash
org.eclipse.platform
--launcher.XXMaxPermSize
256m
--launcher.defaultAction
openFile
-vmargs
-Xms40m
-Xmx384m

I would add the -data argument like so, I've left empty lines to show what was added since there is no HTML or Markdown formatting in a code block, remember that the blank lines should not be in the actual eclipse.ini file.

-startup
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.1.0.v20100507.jar
--launcher.library
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_1.1.1.R36x_v20100810
-showsplash
org.eclipse.platform
--launcher.XXMaxPermSize
256m
--launcher.defaultAction
openFile

-data
.\workspace     

-vmargs
-Xms40m
-Xmx384m