Importing existing source code into the IDE

As with many tasks within the IDE, there's more than one method to bring existing source files into your workspace:

Filesystem drag-and-drop — you can drag-and-drop (or copy and paste) individual files from the filesystem into your project in your workspace.
CVS repository — you can use the CVS Repositories view to connect to a CVS repository and check out projects, folders, or files into your workspace.
SVN repository — you can use the SVN Repositories view to connect to a SVN repository and check out projects, folders, or files into your workspace.
Import wizard — this IDE wizard lets you import existing projects, files from the filesystem or archive files into your workspace.
Adding linked resources — this lets you work with files and folders that reside in the filesystem outside your project's location in the workspace. You might use linked resources, for example, if you have a source tree that's handled by some other source-management tool outside of the IDE. For more information about linked resources, follow these links in the Workbench User Guide: Concepts > Workbench > Linked resources .

Note:

Whichever method you use to bring existing source files into your workspace, you always need to set up an IDE project in your workspace in order to work with the resources you're importing.

For instructions about creating a project, see Step 1: Creating a project for your source code.

If you're importing code that uses an existing build system, you may need to provide a Makefile with all: and clean: targets that call your existing build system.

For example, if you're using the jam tool to build your application, your IDE project Makefile might look like this:

all: 
       jam -fbuild.jam 
clean: 
       jam -fbuild.jam clean