Eclipse-based IDE’s have a powerful feature to make ‘variants’ of the same projects: Build Configurations. Build configurations are a powerful thing in Eclipse: they allow me to make ‘variants’ of a project. The project will share the common things, and I can simply tweak things one way or the other for example to produce a ‘release’ or a ‘debug’ binary of my application without duplicate the project.

Build configurations are managed through either the context menu on the project or with the top menu:

Eclipse Project Build Configuration

I’m showing in this post screenshots from NXP Kinetis Design Studio V3.2.0, but things are applicable to pretty much any Eclipse-based IDE.

 Build configurations only apply to the build settings, and not to the debug settings.

With the ‘Manage’ option I can manage my configurations:

Managing Build Configuration Dialog

For example, I can add a ‘Release’ configuration with the ‘New’ button:

 See “Debug vs. Release?” for more thoughts on that topic.

Creating New Configuration

I give a name and an optional description. I usually ‘clone’ from an existing configuration. That way I get a new configuration with a good starting point.

One configuration is always active, and the ‘manage’ dialog can be used to change the active configuration:

Active Build Configuration

The active build configuration shows up in the list of configuration e.g. under the build ‘hammer’:

Active Build

So how can I specify settings for a configuration? For this, there is a configuration area in the project settings:

Configurations in Project Settings

There is a button to manage the configurations, and a drop down to select the configuration which I want to affect. There is also an item in the list called [All Configurations]: when using that item, changes are ‘pushed’ to all configurations.

For example, I can set a different compiler optimization for the Release configuration:

Release Configuration with high optimization

 When using multiple configurations, always check to which configuration you are making the changes.

The configuration name is used as the name for the output folder name:

Configuration Name in Output Folder

That way for each configuration separate binaries are built.

Summary

Eclipse configurations are a great way to make different variants of projects. A new configuration can be cloned from an existing one, and then tweaked for example to build a release binary or to use custom build settings.

Happy Building!