How to import/export global workspace preferences between workspaces

This document explains how to export existing workspace preferences to a new workspace.

The workspace is a directory where TimeStorm platform and all the installed plug-ins store their preferences, configurations and temporary information. Subsequent TimeStorm invocations will use this directory to restore the previous state.

In a workspace you define/import projects which reference your disk resources. You don't have to move project files with their source code files into the workspace directory. Importing an existing project into a workspace directory doesn't import or copy source files into the workspace. Instead, the workspace directory has reference to the project on your disk.

Each time you start TimeStorm you can create a new workspace directory or indicate an existing one. You can create many workspaces, each one dedicated to some activity. You may use one workspace for developing your current project and another for maintaining the previous one. If the two activities are unrelated, in doing so you minimize clutter and improve performance by reducing the amount of projects in a single workspace.

A Preference is a data which is persisted between workspace sessions. For more information of preferences, please refer to https://www.eclipse.org/articles/article.php?file=Article-Preferences/article.html or https://www.wideskills.com/eclipse-plugin-tutorial/eclipse-plugin-preference-pages-tutorial

In order to view preferences go to Window --> Preferences. Following figure shows how preferences dialog looks like.

TimeStorm developers may maintain many active workspaces. TimeStorm keeps some settings inside the workspace .metadata folder. The question is: how to copy or transfer carefully the balanced workspace settings to another newly created workspace?

To import preferences settings in TimeStorm follow the below steps.

1. Store Global Preferences Settings
2. Impot Global Preferences Settings to a new workspace.

1. Store Global Preferences Settings:

TimeStorm automatically stores global preferences settings under {home_dir}/.timesys/timestorm/globalSettings as timestorm.epf as shown below.

2. Impot Global Preferences Settings to a new workspace:

To apply the preferences (or settings) to a new workspace open the new workspace which will automatically show “Import Preferences” dialogue with OK and Cancel buttons as shown below.

Click on OK button to import existing workspace preferences settings or Cancel button to use default workspace preferences settings.