How to delete a workspace in Eclipse?

313
votes

How to delete a workspace in Eclipse?

6
eclipseworkspace
I know this seems like a simple question but the best way to pose it would have been to say what you did that didn't work (if anything), and why you're trying to do this. You might be asking the wrong question unknowingly and the more info you can provide, the better the answers you'll receive. – MattGrommes
Thanks Matt for your suggestion. I was not really facing any specific problem in deleting a workspace; I was just curious to know if there is a way to delete the workspace from within Eclipse. – Rahul

6 Answers

451
votes

Just delete the whole directory. This will delete all the projects but also the Eclipse cache and settings for the workspace. These are kept in the .metadata folder of an Eclipse workspace. Note that you can configure Eclipse to use project folders that are outside the workspace folder as well, so you may want to verify the location of each of the projects.

You can remove the workspace from the suggested workspaces by going into the General/Startup and Shutdown/Workspaces section of the preferences (via Preferences > General > Startup & Shudown > Workspaces > [Remove] ). Note that this does not remove the files itself. For old versions of Eclipse you will need to edit the org.eclipse.ui.ide.prefs file in the configuration/.settings directory under your installation directory (or in ~/.eclipse on Unix, IIRC).

279
votes

It's possible to remove the workspace in Eclipse without much complications. The options are available under Preferences->General->Startup and Shutdown->Workspaces.

Note that this does not actually delete the files from the system, it simply removes it from the list of suggested workspaces. It changes the org.eclipse.ui.ide.prefs file in Jon's answer from within Eclipse.

38
votes

For Eclipse PDT in Mac OS, once you have deleted the actual workspace directory the option to select and switch to that workspace will still be available unless you delete the entry from Preferences >> General >> Startup and Shutdown >> Workspaces.

12
votes

I'm not sure about older versions, but from NEON onward, you can just right click on workspace and select Remove from launcher selection option.

Eclipse Neon - Remove Workspace

of course this won't remove the original files. It simply removes it from the list of suggested workspaces.

10
votes

Click on the menu Window > Preferences and go to Workspaces like below :

| General
    | Startup and Shutdown
        | Workspaces

Select the workspace to delete and click on the Remove button.

1
votes

Just go to the \eclipse-java-helios-SR2-win32\eclipse\configuration.settings directory and change or remove org.eclipse.ui.ide.prefs file.