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 :-)