.classpath and .project - check into version control or not?

I'm running an open source java project that consists of multiple modules in a tree of dependencies. All those modules are subdirectories in a subversion repository. For newcomers to our project, it's a lot of work to set all that up manually in eclipse.

Not all our developers use eclipse. Nevertheless, we're considering to just check in the .classpath and .project files to help newcomers to get started. Is this a good idea? Or would that lead to constant conflicts in those files? Is there an alternative way to make the project easy to set up on eclipse?

Solution 1:

Definitively yes, as I said in "Do you keep your project files under version control?"

"Load it up, set it up, go."

But... this is actually true only for recent Eclipse3.5 settings, where build paths support relative paths:

And Eclipse3.6 would be better, as it supports relative paths for path variables in Linked Resources:

(since 3.6M5)

Solution 2:

Definitely no - it's generally terrible idea to distribute project files via subversion. Especially since someone might modify them in a some strange manner. A good page in the project's documentation is a much better idea. Our project also has many modules and a complex setup. We've set up a confluence page describing how to get started with the project on each populer IDE - IntelliJ, Eclipse, NetBeans. A README file in Subversion contains the same info.

Solution 3:

I vote no, but that's because I would generally generate these files from maven