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This is NOT a life or death issue. I do have a backup from 2 or 3 days ago. - I think the answer to this may be "Learn to always save & backup your files every night, before you turn out the lights and go home" but just in case there is a happier answer, here goes.

I was programing some Android/Java stuff in Eclipse. I left the machine on with eclipse open and a couple of source java/xml files open inside of eclipse and gave up for the night. When I sat down at the machine this morning, I had a message that windows had preformed an update, and had re-booted my machine. after re-logging in and opening Eclipse it showed the source files in edit windows and they looked normal, but as soon as I tried to type in the edit window, I got some kind of a message that "Files are derived, do I really want to edit them" (I could be wrong on the exact wording. I didn't copy the text down before hitting no or Cancel or whatever the choice was that I thought would get me out of there without doing anything). after I left that screen, it showed me a now blank edit window for the source files. I closed that and and tried to re-open the file from the Package Explorer, but it wouldn't open. So I closed Eclipse and took a look in the /src directory and it appears the source files are gone. I do have a backup from a couple of days ago, so it's not a life or death problem to go back, but my real questions are. 1- Is this a normal occurrence when a machine boots/power fails/crashes unexpectedly with source files open in Eclipse? 2 - Did I answer the "Files are derived..." question wrong? is there something I could have done at that point to rescue the file? Any comments welcome. - Joe

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  • You should learn to use a version control system like e.g. git (perhaps thru github.com or gitorious.org etc) Commented Sep 23, 2012 at 20:17
  • occured to me once. i created another eclipse copy(another version) . imprted workspace into it and it opened flawlessly. then again opened earlier eclipse and it worked there too . Dont know the exact reason, but it worked. Commented Sep 23, 2012 at 20:20
  • @Basile Starynkevitch - Yes I know I should use version control, but even if I did, this was a case of (I hate admitting this publicly) I was just tires and lazy and went home without saving stuff and was curious if there was another answer to the "Files were derived" warning that I could have chosen. Commented Sep 23, 2012 at 20:25
  • @Ashish Gupta - The source files are actually missing when looked at with windows explorer, so copying the remained to another directory probably wouldn't help Commented Sep 23, 2012 at 20:25

1 Answer 1

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If you remember where your files were, you could right click on the parent in the Project Explorer > Restore from History or Replace With > Local History. This feels like a very basic local VCS. Even though this is not an endless history, you can extend the size allowed for Eclipse to keep such previous versions.

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Thanks Mithril. Never knew this feature existed
Also added some extra - keep time & space - to the history file. This will probably be used more then I want to publicly admit - Joe

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