Eclipse's local history…where are files saved?

Question

Can someone explain how Eclipse's local history works?

I accidentally overwrote a file in a project but need to revert to an earlier version. Is there a chance that Eclipse has the older file cached somewhere?

Answer 1

You can use the link http://wiki.eclipse.org/FAQ_Where_is_the_workspace_local_history_stored%3F is very helpfull

Answer 2

VonC's answer has all the information you need for finding the location of your code backups. I would simply add that if you are on a Mac or Linux, you can do something like this:

$ cd [WORKSPACE]/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.history/
$ grep -rl "class Foo" . | xargs ls -lt

This will find all the versions of a file that contains a particular string (ie. "class Foo"), and sort them by date/time to easily find the most recent version.

Answer 3

Try right-clicking on the file in eclipse, and choose Replace With->Local History.

If there's history available, it'll show up as a list of edit times.

But more importantly, as pointed out in other answers, be sure to put your files in version control! SVN is pretty easy to set up (you don't need a server; it can just use the file system); use it even if you aren't sharing with others.

A tip: whenever you hear yourself say "yes!", check in all of your code. 10 minutes later, you'll be saying "how did I mess that up?"

Answer 4

If you have lost a full package structure due to accidental deletion or svn/cvs override, select the project> right click> Restore from local history => select the files.

Answer 5

Open the CVS view and you should see a filter for local history. You should then be able to right-click on the correct version and Get Contents or do a manual compare and merge. I'm not sure what the eclipse defaults are for keeping local history but there is a decent chance you'll be able to get your stuff back if you act quickly.

Answer 6

To complete CurtainDog's answer: from eclipse FAQ

Every time you modify a file in Eclipse, a copy of the old contents is kept in the local history. At any time, you can compare or replace a file with any older version from the history.
Although this is no replacement for a real code repository, it can help you out when you change or delete a file by accident.
Local history also has an advantage that it wasn’t really designed for: The history can also help you out when your workspace has a catastrophic problem or if you get disk errors that corrupt your workspace files.
As a last resort, you can manually browse the local history folder to find copies of the files you lost, which is a bit like using Google’s cache to browse Web pages that no longer exist.

Each file revision is stored in a separate file with a random file name inside the history folder. The path of the history folder inside your workspace is

.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.history/

You can use your operating system’s search tool to locate the files you are looking for.

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Note, if your need to import your local history into a new workspace, you will need both:

• .metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.history
• .metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.project

to have a functional local history in that new workspace.