Building Projects with Eclipse from the Command Line

eclipse has a great user interface (ui). but what if i want to do things from the command line, without the gui? for example to build one or more projects in the workspace without using the eclipse ui? with this, i can do automated check-outs and do automated builds.

performed a command line project build with eclipse

the solution to this: there is a command line version of eclipse which i can use to run eclipse in the command line version. inside the eclipse folder on windows, there is the eclipsec program which is the command-line version of eclipse:

eclipsec program, a command line version of eclipse

the options of this command line version (for eclipse kepler) are described here:

http://help.eclipse.org/kepler/index.jsp?topic=%2forg.eclipse.platform.doc.isv%2freference%2fmisc%2fruntime-options.html

for example

eclipsec.exe -nosplash -application org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.core.headlessbuild -data c:\my_wsp -build k64f

will launch eclipse without splash screen ( -nosplash ), uses the - application command to load the managed make builder (which is used to build projects), with -data i specify the workspace to be used, and with the -build command it will the project k64f.

more options and details are shown here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/344797/build-several-cdt-c-projects-from-commandline

and a very good article with additional background information how to use it with the gnu arm eclipse plubins can be found here: http://gnuarmeclipse.livius.net/blog/headless-builds/

happy headlessing :-)