CDT projects

Before you do any work in the CDT, you must create a project to store your source code, makefiles, binaries and related files. C/C++ projects are displayed in the C/C++ Projects view.

Tip: Nested projects are not supported. Each project must be organized as a discrete entity. Project dependencies are supported by allowing a project to reference other projects that reside in your workspace. For more information, see Selecting referenced projects.

For more information about projects and where they are stored, see:

• Workbench User Guide > Tasks > Resources
• Workbench User Guide > Tasks > Running Eclipse

Project types

You can create a standard make C or C++ project or a managed make C or C++ project.

Standard Make C or C++ project

You need to create a makefile in order to build your project or use an existing makefile.

Managed Make C or C++ project

A managed make project generates the makefile for you. In addition, the files module.dep and module.mk are created for every project sub-directory. These files are required for your managed make project to successfully build.

How the CDT associates project natures

Projects are assigned natures and tags that identify the properties of each project. The CDT uses natures to identify what can and cannot be done with each project. The CDT also uses natures to filter out projects that are contextually irrelevant; for example, non-library projects from a list of library projects.

Project conversion

You can convert a C project to a C++ project and vice versa. An example of when this may be useful is if you create a C project, your requirements change during the course of the development, and you need to continue coding in C++. Since the initial project was coded in C, the parser will not recognize certain semantics such as "class", or keywords such as "public", "private", and  "template". You need to create a C++ project to make the parser and other tools aware of the language change. You can simply convert your C project to a C++ project rather than creating a new C++ project, copying your project files over and resolving source control issues.

A few notes about projects

• When you create a file within a project, a record (local history) is created of every time that you modify the file and how you modify it. For more information about local history, see Workbench User Guide > Reference > User interface information > Development environment > Local history.
• Spaces in projects and filenames can cause problems with some tools, such as the make utility or the compiler.
• Be careful when using case alone to between distinguish files and projects. UNIX-based operating system filenames are case-sensitive, but Windows filenames are not. Therefore, Hello.c and hello.c overwrite each other in Windows, but are separate files in UNIX.

For more information about projects, see Workbench User Guide > Concepts > Workbench > Resources.

Project file views
How to bring C/C++ source into Eclipse

Defining project properties
Working with C/C++ project files

Project properties
Views